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CREATION 
OR    EVOLUTION? 


A   PHILOSOPHICAL   INQUIRY, 


BY 

GEORGE  TICKNOR  CURTIS. 


NEW  YORK: 
B.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY, 

1,  3,  A»D  5  BOND  STREET. 

1887. 


Copyright,  188T. 
By  GEORGE  TICKNOR  CURTIS. 


TO 

LEWIS  A.  SAYKE,  M.  D., 

WHOSE    PEOFESSIONAL    EMINENCE    IS    EEOOONIZED 

IN  BOTH   HEMISPHERES, 

WHOSE   SKILL  AS   A   STJEGEON 

8UFFEKINO   HUMANITY    GRATEFULLY    ACKNOWLEDGES, 

TO    WHOSE   ANATOMICAL   LEARNING 

THE    AUTHOR    IS    LARGELY    INDEBTED, 

.AND    OF    WHOSE    FRIENDSHIP    HE    IS    PROUD, 

@:^is  §ook 

IS  AFFECTIONATELY  INSCRIBED. 


"  Dost  thou  not  know,  my  new  astronomer ! 
Earth,  turning  from  the  sun,  brings  night  to  man  f 
Man,  turning  from  his  God,  brings  endless  night; 
Where  thou  canst  read  no  morals,  find  no  friend, 
Amend  no  manners,  and  expect  no  peace,^"* 

young's  night  thoughts. 


PEEFAOE 


Perhaps  it  is  expected  of  a  writer  who  steps  out  of 
the  sphere  of  his  ordinary  pursuits,  and  deals  with  such  a 
subject  as  that  which  is  treated  in  this  work,  that  he  will 
account  for  his  so  doing.  It  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  say 
that  no  class  of  men  can  have  a  monopoly  in  any  subject. 
But  I  am  quite  willing  to  take  my  readers  into  my  confi- 
dence so  far  as  to  state  how  I  came  to  write  this  book. 

Most  men,  who  have  a  special  pursuit,  find  the  necessity 
for  recreation  of  some  kind.  Some  take  it  in  one  way,  and 
some  in  another.  It  has  been  my  habit  through  life  to  seek 
occasional  relief  from  the  monotony  of  professional  voca- 
tions in  intellectual  pursuits  of  another  character.  Having 
this  habit — which  I  have  found  by  experience  has  no  tend- 
ency to  lessen  one's  capacity  for  the  duties  of  a  profession, 
or  one's  relish  of  its  occupations — I  some  years  ago  took 
up  the  study  of  the  modern  doctrine  of  animal  evolution. 
Until  after  the  death  of  the  late  Mr.  Charles  Darwin,  I 
had  not  given  a  very  close  attention  to  this  subject.  The 
honors  paid  to  his  memory,  and  due  to  his  indefatigable 
research  and  extensive  knowledge,  led  me  to  examine  his 
'* Descent  of  Man"  and  his  '' Origin  of  Species,"  both  of 


viii  PREFACE. 

whicli  I  studied  with  care,  and  I  trust  with  candor.  I  was 
next  induced  to  examine  the  writings  of  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer  on  the  subject  of  CYolution,  with  which  I  had  also 
been  preyiously  unacquainted  except  in  a  general  way.  I 
was  a  good  deal  surprised  at  the  extent  of  Mr.  Spencer's 
reputation  as  a  thinker,  and  by  the  currency  which  his  pe- 
culiar philosophy  has  had  in  this  country,  where  it  has  led, 
among  the  young  and  inexperienced,  as  well  as  among 
older  persons,  to  very  incorrect  habits  of  reasoning  on  sub- 
jects of  the  highest  importance.  The  result  of  my  studies 
of  these  writers  is  the  present  book.  I  haye  written  it  be- 
cause I  have  seen,  or  believe  that  I  have  seen,  where  the 
conflict  arises  between  some  of  the  deductions  of  modern 
science  and  the  principles  which  ought  to  regulate  not 
only  religious  belief,  but  belief  in  anything  that  is  not 
open  to  the  direct  observation  of  our  senses.  But  I  trust 
that  I  shall  not  be  understood  as  having  written  for  the 
purpose  of  specially  defending  the  foundations  of  religious 
belief.  This  is  no  official  duty  of  mine.  How  theologians 
manage,  or  ought  to  manage,  the  argument  which  is  to 
convince  men  of  the  existence  and  methods  of  God,  it  is 
not  for  me  to  say.  But  a  careful  examination  of  the  new 
philosophy  has  convinced  me  that  those  who  are  the  spe- 
cial teachers  of  religious  truth  have  need  of  great  caution  in 
the  admissions  or  concessions  which  they  make,  when  they 
undertake  to  reconcile  some  of  the  conclusions  of  modern 
scientists  with  belief  in  a  Creator.  I  do  not  here  speak  of 
the  Biblical  account  of  the  creation,  but  I  speak  of  that 
belief  in  a  Creator  which  is  to  be  deduced  from  the  phe- 
nomena of  nature.     "While  there  are  naturalists,  scientists, 


PREFACE.  ix 

and  philosophers  at  the  present  day,  whose  speculations  do 
not  exclude  the  idea  of  a  Supreme  Being,  there  are  others 
whose  theories  are  entirely  inconsistent  with  a  belief  in  a 
personal  God,  the  Creator  and  Governor  of  the  universe. 
Moreover,  although  there  are  great  differences  in  this  re- 
spect between  the  different  persons  who  accept  evolution 
in  some  form,  the  whole  doctrine  of  the  development  of 
distinct  species  out  of  other  species  makes  demands  upon 
our  credulity  which  are  irreconcilable  with  the  principles 
of  belief  by  which  we  regulate,  or  ought  to  regulate,  our  ac- 
ceptance of  any  new  matter  of  belief.  The  principles  of 
belief  which  we  apply  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life  are 
those  which  should  be  applied  to  scientific  or  philosophical 
theories ;  and  inasmuch  as  the  judicial  method  of  reason- 
ing upon  facts  is  at  once  the  most  satisfactory  and  the 
most  in  accordance  with  common  sense,  I  have  here  under- 
taken to  apply  it  to  the  evidence  which  is  supposed  to  es- 
tablish the  hypothesis  of  animal  evolution,  in  contrast  with 
the  hypothesis  of  special  creations. 

I  am  no  ecclesiastic.  I  advance  no  arguments  in  favor  of 
one  or  another  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures  about  which 
there  is  controversy  among  Christians.  While  I  firmly  be- 
lieve that  God  exists,  and  that  he  has  made  a  revelation 
to  mankind,  whereby  he  has  given  us  direct  assurance  of 
immortality,  I  do  not  know  that  this  belief  disqualifies  me 
from  judging,  upon  proper  principles  of  evidence,  of  the 
soundness  of  a  theory  which  denies  that  he  specially  creat- 
ed either  the  body  or  the  mind  of  man.  How  far  the  hy- 
pothesis of  evolution,  by  destroying  our  belief  that  God 
specially  created  us,  tends  to  negative  any  purpose  for 


X  PEEFACE. 

which  we  can  suppose  him  to  have  made  to  us  a  revelation 
of  our  immortality,  it  is  for  the  theologian  to  consider. 
For  myself,  I  am  not  conscious  that  in  examining  the 
theory  of  evolution  I  have  been  influenced  by  my  belief 
in  what  is  called  revealed  religion.  I  have,  at  all  events, 
studiously  excluded  from  the  argument  all  that  has  been 
inculcated  by  the  Hebrew  or  the  Christian  records  as  au- 
thorized or  inspired  teachings,  and  have  treated  the  Mo- 
saic account  of  the  creation  like  any  other  hypothesis  of 
the  origin  of  man  and  the  other  animals.  The  result  of 
my  study  of  the  hypothesis  of  evolution  is,  that  it  is  an  in- 
genious but  delusive  mode  of  accounting  for  the  existence 
of  either  the  body  or  the  mind  of  man ;  and  that  it  em- 
ploys a  kind  of  reasoning  which  no  person  of  sound  judg- 
ment would  apply  to  anything  that  might  affect  his  wel- 
fare, his  happiness,  his  estate,  or  his  conduct  in  the  prac- 
tical affairs  of  life. 

He  who  would  truly  know  what  the  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution is,  and  to  what  it  leads,  must  literally  begin  at  the 
beginning.  He  must  free  his  mind  from  the  cant  of  ag- 
nosticism and  from  the  cant  of  belief.  He  must  refuse  to 
accept  dogmas  on  the  authority  of  any  one,  be  they  the 
dogmas  of  the  scientist,  or  of  the  theologian.  He  must 
learn  that  his  mental  nature  is  placed  under  certain 
laws,  as  surely  as  his  corporeal  structure ;  and  he  must 
cheerfully  obey  the  necessities  which  compel  him  to  ac- 
cept some  conclusions  and  to  reject  others.  Keeping  his 
reasoning  powers  in  a  well-balanced  condition,  he  must 
prove  all  things,  holding  fast  to  that  which  is  in  conform- 
ity with  sound  deduction,  and  to  that  alone.     But  all  per- 


PREFACE.  xi 

sons  may  not  be  able  to  afford  the  time  to  pursue  truth  in 
this  way,  or  may  not  have  the  facilities  for  the  requisite 
research.  It  seemed  to  me,  therefore,  that  an  effort  to  do 
for  them  what  they  can  not  do  for  themselves  would  be 
acceptable  to  a  great  many  people. 

It  may  be  objected  that  the  imaginary  philosopher 
whom  I  have  introduced  in  some  of  my  chapters  under 
the  name  of  Sophereus,  or  the  searcher  after  wisdom,  de- 
bating the  doctrines  of  evolution  with  a  supposed  disciple 
of  that  school,  whom  I  have  named  Kosmicos,  is  an  im- 
possible person.  It  may  perhaps  be  said  that  the  concep- 
tion of  a  man  absolutely  free  from  all  dogmatic  religious 
teaching,  from  all  bias  to  any  kind  of  belief,  and  yet  hav- 
ing as  much  knowledge  of  various  systems  of  belief  as  I 
have  imputed  to  this  imaginary  person,  would  in  modern 
society  be  the  conception  of  an  unattainable  character. 
My  answer  to  this  criticism  would  be  that  I  felt  myself  at 
liberty  to  imagine  any  kind  of  character  that  would  suit 
my  purpose.  How  successfully  I  have  carried  out  the 
idea  of  a  man  in  mature  life  entirely  free  from  aU  pre- 
conceived opinions,  and  forming  his  beliefs  uj^on  princi- 
ples of  pure  reason,  it  is  for  my  readers  to  judge.  With 
regard  to  the  other  interlocutor  in  the 'dialogues,  I  hope 
it  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  say  that  I  do  not  impute  all 
of  his  opinions  or  arguments  to  the  professors  of  the  evo- 
lution school,  or  to  any  section  of  it.  He  is  a  representa- 
tive of  the  effects  of  some  of  their  teachings,  but  not  an 
individual  portrait.  But  as,  for  the  purposes  of  the  an- 
tagonism, it  was  expedient  to  put  into  the  mouth  of  this 
person  whatever  can  be  said  in  favor  of  the  hypothesis  of 


xii  PREFACE. 

evolution,  it  became  necessary  to  make  him  represent  tlie 
dogmatic  side  of  the  theory;  and  thus  to  make  the  col- 
lision and  contrast  between  the  minds  of  the  two  debaters 
as  strong  as  I  could.  Controversial  discussion  in  the 
form  of  debate  has  been  used  from  the  time  of  Plato. 
While  I  have  adopted  a  method,  I  have  not  presumed  to 
imitate  its  great  exemplars.  But  for  the  value  of  that 
method  I  shall  presently  cite  weighty  testimony.  It  was 
a  relief  to  me  to  resort  to  it  after  having  pursued  the 
subject  in  the  more  usual  form  of  discussion  ;  and  in- 
deed it  forced  itself  upon  me  as  a  kind  of  necessity,  be- 
cause it  seemed  the  fairest  way  of  presenting  what  could 
be  said  on  both  sides  of  the  question.  I  hope  it  may  have 
the  good  fortune  to  keep  alive  the  interest  of  the  reader, 
after  he  has  perused  the  previous  chapters. 

One  disadvantage  of  all  positive  writing  or  discourse 
is  that  there  is  no  one  to  confute,  to  contradict,  or  to 
maintain  the  negative.  At  the  bar,  and  in  some  public 
assemblies,  there  is  an  antagonist ;  and  truth  is  elicited 
by  the  collision.  But  in  didactic  writing,  especially  on 
a  philosophical  topic,  it  is  best  to  introduce  an  antago- 
nist, and  to  make  him  speak  in  his  own  person.  Two 
of  the  best  thinkers  of  our  time  have  forcibly  stated  the 
advantage — the  necessity,  in  short — of  personal  debate. 
Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill,  in  his  essay  on  Liberty,  observes 
that — 

*^The  loss  of  so  important  an  aid  to  the  intelligent 
and  living  apprehension  of  a  truth  as  is  afforded  by  the 
necessity  of  explaining  it  to  or  defending  it  against  op- 
ponents, though  not  sufficient  to  outweigh,  is  no  trifling 


PREFACE.  xiii 

drawback  from  the  benefits  of  its  universal  recognition. 
Where  this  advantage  can  not  be  had,  I  confess  I  should 
like  to  see  the  teachers  of  mankind  endeavoring  to  pro- 
vide a  substitute  for  it ;  some  contrivance  for  making  the 
difficulties  of  the  question  as  present  to  the  learner's  con- 
sciousness as  if  they  were  pressed  upon  him  by  a  dissen- 
tient champion  eager  for  his  conversion. 

"But  instead  of  seeking  contrivances  for  this  purpose, 
they  have  lost  those  they  formerly  had.  The  Socratic 
dialectics,  so  magnificently  exemplified  in  the  dialogues 
of  Plato,  were  a  contrivance  of  this  description.  They 
were  essentially  a  discussion  of  the  great  questions  of  life 
and  philosophy,  directed  with  consummate  skill  to  the 
purpose  of  convincing  any  one,  who  had  merely  adopted 
the  commonplaces  of  received  opinion,  that  he  did  not 
understand  the  subject — ^that  he  as  yet  attached  no  defi- 
nite meaning  to  the  doctrines  he  professed,  in  order  that, 
becoming  aware  of  his  ignorance,  he  might  be  put  in  the 
way  to  attain  a  stable  belief,  resting  on  a  clear  apprehen- 
sion both  of  the  meaning  of  doctrines  and  of  their  evi- 
dence. The  school  disputations  of  the  middle  ages  had 
a  similar  object.  They  were  intended  to  make  sure  that 
the  pupil  understood  his  own  opinion,  and  (by  necessary 
correlation)  the  opinion  opposed  to  it,  and  could  enforce 
the  grounds  of  one  and  confute  those  of  the  other.  The 
last-mentioned  contests  had,  indeed,  the  incurable  defect 
that  the  premises  appealed  to  were  taken  from  authority, 
not  from  reason ;  and  as  a  discipline  to  the  mind  they 
were  in  every  respect  inferior  to  the  powerful  dialectics 
which  formed  the  intellects  of  the  'Socratici  viri.'    But 


xiv  PREFACE. 

the  modern  mind  owes  far  more  to  both  than  it  is  gener- 
ally willing  to  admit ;  and  the  present  modes  of  instruc- 
tion contain  nothing  which  in  the  smallest  degree  supplies 
the  place  either  of  the  one  or  of  the  other.  ...  It  is  the 
fashion  of  the  present  time  to  disparage  negative  logic — 
that  which  points  out  weakness  in  theory  or  errors  in 
practice,  without  establishing  positive  truths.  Such  nega- 
tive criticism  would  indeed  be  poor  enough  as  an  ulti- 
mate result,  but  as  a  means  to  attaining  any  positive 
knowledge  or  conviction  worthy  the  name,  it  can  not  be 
valued  too  highly ;  and  until  people  are  again  systemati- 
cally trained  to  it  there  will  be  few  great  thinkers,  and  a 
low  general  average  of  intellect  in  any  but  the  mathe- 
matical and  physical  departments  of  speculation.  On 
any  other  subject  no  one's  opinions  deserve  the  name  of 
knowledge,  except  so  far  as  he  has  either  had  forced  upon 
him  by  others,  or  gone  through  of  himself,  the  same 
mental  process  which  would  have  been  required  of  him 
in  carrying  on  an  active  controversy  with  opponents." 

Mr.  Grote,  in  his  admirable  work  on  "Plato  and  the 
other  Companions  of  Socrates,"  has  the  following  passage  : 

**  Plato  is  usually  extolled  by  his  admirers  as  the  cham- 
pion of  the  Absolute-^f  unchangeable  forms,  immutable 
truth,  objective  necessity,  cogent  and  binding  on  every 
one.  He  is  praised  for  having  refuted  Protagoras,  who 
can  find  no  standard  beyond  the  individual  recognition 
and  belief  of  his  own  mind  or  that  of  some  one  else. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  Plato  often  talks  in  that  strain, 
but  the  method  followed  in  his  dialogues,  and  the  general 
principles  of  methods  which  he  lays  down  here  as  well  as 


PREFACE.  XV 

elsewhere,  point  to  a  directly  opposite  conclusion.  Of  this 
the  Phaedrus  is  a  signal  instance.  Instead  of  the  extreme 
of  generality,  it  proclaims  the  extreme  of  speciality.  The 
objection  which  the  Socrates  of  the  Phaedrus  advances 
against  the  didactic  efficacy  of  written  discourse  is  founded 
on  the  fact  that  it  is  the  same  to  all  readers — that  it  takes 
no  cognizance  of  the  differences  of  individual  minds  nor 
of  the  same  mind  at  different  times.  Socrates  claims  for 
dialectic  debate  the  valuable  privilege  that  it  is  constant 
action  and  reaction  between  two  individual  minds — an 
appeal  by  the  inherent  force  and  actual  condition  of  each 
to  the  like  elements  in  the  other— an  ever-shifting  pres- 
entation of  the  same  topics,  accommodated  to  the  measure 
of  intelligence  and  cast  of  emotion  in  the  talkers  and  at 
the  moment.  The  individuality  of  each  mind — both  ques- 
tioner and  respondent — is  here  kept  in  view  as  the  govern- 
ing condition  of  the  process.  No  two  minds  can  be  ap- 
proached by  the  same  road  or  by  the  same  interrogation. 
The  questioner  can  not  advance  a  step  except  by  the  ad- 
mission of  the  respondent.  Every  respondent  is  the  meas- 
ure to  himself.  He  answers  suitably  to  his  own  belief ; 
he  defends  by  his  own  suggestions  ;  he  yields  to  the  press- 
ure of  contradiction  and  inconsistency  when  he  feels  theniy 
and  not  before.  Each  dialogist  is  (to  use  the  Protagorean 
phrase)  the  measure  to  himself  of  truth  and  falsehood, 
according  as  he  himself  believes  it.  Assent  or  dissent, 
whichever  it  may  be,  springs  only  from  the  free  working 
of  the  individual  mind  in  its  actual  condition  then  and 
there.  It  is  to  the  -individual  mind  alone  that  appeal  is 
made,  and  this  is  what  Protagoras  asks  for. 


xvi  PREFACE. 

"We  thus  find,  in  Plato's  philosophical  character,  two 
extreme  opposite  tendencies  and  opposite  poles  co-existent. 
We  must  recognize  them  both,  but  they  can  never  be 
reconciled  ;  sometimes  he  obeys  and  follows  the  one,  some- 
times the  other. 

"If  it  had  been  Plato's  purpose  to  proclaim  and  im- 
pose upon  every  one  something  which  he  called  '  Absolute 
Truth,'  one  and  the  same  alike  imperative  upon  all,  he 
would  best  proclaim  it  by  preaching  or  writing.  To 
modify  this  'Absolute,'  according  to  the  yarieties  of  the 
persons  addressed,  would  divest  it  of  its  intrinsic  attribute 
and  excellence.  If  you  pretend  to  deal  with  an  Absolute, 
you  must  turn  away  your  eyes  from  all  diversity  of  appre- 
hending intellects  and  believing  subjects." 

With  such  testimony  to  the  value  of  dialectic  debate, 
I  hope  that  my  adoption  of  it  as  a  method  will  be  regarded 
as  something  better  than  an  affectation. 

Mr.  Spencer,  in  one  of  his  works,*  referring  to  and 
quoting  from  Berkeley's  "Dialogues  of  Hylas  and  Philo- 
laus,"  observes  that  "imaginary  conversation  affords  great 
facilities  for  gaining  a  victory.  When  you  can  put  into 
an  adversary's  mouth  just  such  replies  as  suit  your  pur- 
pose, there  is  little  difficulty  in  reaching  the  desired  con- 
clusion." I  have  not  written  to  gain  a  victory;  and, 
indeed,  I  am  quite  aware  that  it  would  be  impossible  to 
gain  one  over  those  with  whom  I  can  have  no  common 
ground  of  reasoning.  In  the  imaginary  conversations  in 
this  work,  I  have  taken  great  care  not  to  put  into  the 

*  "  Principles  of  Psychology,"  vol.  i,  p.  336. 


PREFACE.  xvii 

xnontli  of  the  supposed  representative  of  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  anything  that  would  suit  my  own  purpose  ;  and, 
in  every  instance  in  which  I  have  represented  him  as  rely- 
ing on  the  authority  of  Mr.  Darwin  or  of  Mr.  Spencer,  I 
have  either  made  him  quote  the  words  or  have  made  him 
state  the  positions  as  I  suppose  they  must  be  understood, 
and  have  referred  the  reader  to  the  proper  page  in  the 
works  of  those  writers. 

And  here  I  will  render  all  honor  to  the  admirable  can- 
dor with  which  Mr.  Darwin  discussed  objections  to  his 
theory  which  have  been  propounded  by  others,  and  sug- 
gested further  difficulties  himself.  If  I  do  not  pay  the 
same  tribute  to  Mr.  Spencer,  the  reason  will  be  found  in 
those  portions  of  my  work  in  which  I  have  had  occasion 
to  call  in  question  his  methods  of  reasoning. 

Some  repetition  of  facts  and  arguments  will  be  found 
in  the  following  pages  in  the  different  aspects  in  which 
the  subject  is  treated.  This  has  been  intentional.  "When 
the  tribunal  that  is  addressed  is  a  limited  and  special  one, 
and  is  composed  of  a  high  order  of  minds  accustomed  to 
deal  with  such  a  science,  for  example,  as  jurisprudence,  he 
who  undertakes  to  produce  conviction  can  afford  to  use 
condensation.  He  seldom  has  to  repeat  what  he  has  once 
said ;  and  often,  the  more  compact  his  argument,  the 
more  likely  it  will  be  to  command  assent  if  it  is  clear  as 
well  as  close.  But  this  work  is  not  addressed  to  such  a 
tribunal.  It  is  written  for  various  classes  of  readers,  some 
of  whom  have  already  a  special  acquaintance  with  the  sub- 
ject, some  of  whom  have  less,  and  some  of  whom  have 
now  none  at  all.     It  is  designed  to  explain  what  the  theory 


xviii  PEEFAOE. 

of  evolution  is,  and  to  encounter  it  in  the  mode  best 
adapted  to  reacli  the  yarious  minds  of  whicli  the  mass  of 
readers  is  composed.  If  I  had  written  only  for  scientists 
and  philosophers,  I  should  not  have  repeated  anything. 

For  similar  reasons  I  have  added  to  this  volume  both  a 
general  index  and  a  glossary  of  the  scientific  and  technical 
terms  which  I  have  had  occasion  to  use. 

The  whole  of  the  text  of  this  work  had  been  written 
and  electrotyped  before  I  had  an  opportunity  to  see  the 
very  interesting  "  Life  and  Correspondence  "  of  the  illus- 
trious naturalist,  the  late  Louis  Agassiz,  edited  by  his 
accomplished  widow,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Gary  Agassiz,  and 
published  in  October,  1885,  by  Houghton,  Mifflin  and 
Company,  Boston.  For  a  long  period  of  years,  after  his 
residence  in  this  country  began,  and  until  my  removal 
from  Boston  to  New  York  in  1862,  I  enjoyed  as  much  of 
his  intimacy  as  would  be  likely  to  subsist  between  persons 
of  such  different  pursuits.  I  believe  that  I  understood  his 
general  views  of  creation,  from  his  lectures  and  conversa- 
tion.. It  is  now  made  entirely  certain  that  he  never  ac- 
cepted the  doctrine  of  evolution  of  distinct  types  out  of 
preceding  and  different  types  by  ordinary  generation  ;  and 
it  has  been  to  me  an  inexpressible  satisfaction  to  find  that 
the  opinions  and  reasoning  contained  in  my  work,  and 
adopted  independently  of  any  influence  of  his,  are  con- 
firmed by  what  has  now  been  given  to  the  world.  I  need 
only  refer  to  his  letter  to  Prof.  Sedgwick,  written  in  June, 
1845,  and  to  his  latest  utterance,  the  paper  on  *^  Evolution 
and  Permanence  of  Type,"  in  the  thirty-third  volume  of 
the   "Atlantic  Monthly,"  published  after  his  lamented 


PPwEFACE.  xix 

death  in  1873,  for  proof  that  his  opinions  on  the  Danvin- 
ian  theory  never  changed.  Of  all  the  scientists  whom  I 
have  ever  known,  or  whose  writings  I  have  read,  Agassiz 
always  seemed  to  me  the  broadest  as  well  as  the  most  exact 
and  logical  reasoner. 

New  York,  September ^  1S86. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I. 

^  PAGB 

•  Nature  and  importance  of  the  subject— Is  there  a  relation  of  Creator 
and  creature  between  God  and  man  ? — Rules  of  rational  belief — 
Is  natural  theology  a  progressive  science  ? 1 

CHAPTER  II. 
The  Platonic  Kosmos  compared  with  the  Darwinian  theory  of  evolution    44 

CHAPTER  III. 

'    The  Darwinian  pedigree  of  man — The  evolution  of  organisms  out  of 

other  organisms,  according  to  the  theory  of  Darwin       .         .        .87 

CHAPTER  IV. 
\]  The  doctrine  of  evolution  according  to  Herbert  Spencer       .        .        .131 

CHAPTER  V. 

. /The  doctrine  of  evolution  according  to  Herbert  Spencer  further  con- 

sidered 167 

CHAPTER  VI. 

W  The  doctrine  of  evolution  according  to  Herbert  Spencer  further  con- 
sidered          200 

CHAPTER  VIL 

\  '  Mr.  Spencer's  agnosticism — His  theory  of  the  origin  of  religious  beliefs 
—The  mode  in  which  mankind  are  to  lose  the  consciousness  of  a 
personal  God        . 257 


xxii  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  Vlir. 

\   /  PAGE 

^     The  existence,  attributes,  and  methods  of  God  deducible  from  the  phe- 
nomena of  Nature — Origin  of  the  solar  system     ....  300 

CHAPTER  IX. 

Does  evolution  account  for  the  phenomena  of  society  and  of  nature  ? — 
Necessity  for  a  conception  of  a  personal  actor — Mr.  Spencer's 
protoplasmic  origin  of  all  organic  life — The  Mosaic  account  of 
creation  treated  as  a  hypothesis  which  may  be  scientifically  con- 
trasted with  evolution 334 

CHAPTER  X, 

"  Species,"  "  races,"  and  "  varieties  "—Sexual  division— Causation      .  372 

CHAPTER  XI. 

Origin  of  the  human  mind — Mr.  Spencer's  theory  of  the  composition 

of  mind — His  system  of  morality 394 

CHAPTER  XII. 

Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy  as  a  whole — His  psychology,  and  his  system 
^            of  ethics — The  sacred  origin  of  moral  injunctions,  and  the  secular- 
ization of  morals 434 

CHAPTER  Xni. 

Sophereus  discourses  on  the  nature  and  origin  of  the  human  mind       .  467 

Glossary 647 

Index 557 


CREATION   OR   EVOLUTION? 


CHAPTER  I. 


Nature  and  importance  of  the  subject— Is  there  a  relation  of  Creator  and 
creature  between  God  and  man  ? — Rules  of  rational  belief — Is  natural 
theology  a  progressive  science  ? 

Mak  finds  himself  in  the  universe  a  conscious  and 
thinking  being.  lie  has  to  account  to  himself  for  his  own 
existence.  He  is  impelled  to  this  by  an  irresistible  pro- 
pensity, which  is  constantly  leading  him  to  look  both  in- 
ward and  outward  for  an  answer  to  the  questions  :  What 
am  I  ?  How  came  I  to  be  ?  What  is  the  limit  of  my  ex- 
istence ?  Is  there  any  other  being  in  the  universe  between 
whom  and  myself  there  exists  the  relation  of  Creator  and 
creature  ? 

The  whole  history  of  the  human  mind,  so  far  as  we  have 
any  reliable  history,  is  marked  by  this  perpetual  effort  to 
find  a  First  Cause. 

ISowever  wild  and  fantastic  may  be  the  idea  which  the 
savage  conceives  of  a  being  stronger  and  wiser  than  him- 
self ;  however  groveling  and  sensual  may  be  his  conception 
of  the  form,  or  attributes,  or  action  of  that  being,  he  is, 
when  he  strives  after  the  comprehension  of  his  deity,  en- 
gaged in  the  same  intellectual  effort  that  is  made  by  the 
most  civilized  and  cultivated  of  mankind,  when,  speculat- 
ing upon  the  origin  of  the  human  soul,  or  its  relation  to 
the  universe,  or  the  genesis  of  the  material  world,  they 
reach  the  sublime  conception  of  an  infinite  God,  the  creator 


2  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

of  all  other  spiritual  existences  and  of  all  the  forms  of  ani- 
mal life,  or  when  they  end  in  the  theory  that  there  is  no 
God,  or  in  that  other  theory  which  supposes  that  what  we 
call  the  creation,  man  included,  is  an  evolution  out  of  pri- 
mordial matter,  which  has  been  operated  upon  by  certain 
fixed  laws,  without  any  special  interposition  of  a  creating 
power,  exerted  in  the  production  of  the  forms  of  animal 
life  that  now  inhabit  this  earth,  or  ever  have  inhabited  it. 
In  the  investigation  of  these  contrasted  theories,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  remember  that  the  faculties  of  the  human  mind  are 
essentially  the  same  in  all  conditions  of  civilization  or  bar- 
barism ;  that  they  differ  only  in  the  degree  of  their  growth, 
activity,  and  power  of  reasoning,  and  therefore  that  there 
must  be  a  common  standard  to  which  to  refer  all  beliefs. 
The  sole  standard  to  wlLLcli-ffi£jcaiiJ::fiffiOL,beliefin  anything 
is  its  rationality,  or  a  comparison  between  that  whiclLis  be- 
lieved and  that  which  is  most  probable,  according  to  the 
power  of  human  reason  to  weigh  probabilities.  In  the  un- 
tutored and  uncultivated  savage,  UEIs~power,  although  it 
exists,  is  still  very  feeble ;  partly  because  it  is  exercised 
upon  only  a  few  objects,  and  partly  because  the  individual 
has  comparatively  but  little  opportunity  to  know  all  the 
elements  which  should  be  taken  into  account  in  determin- 
ing a  question  of  moral  probabilities. 

In  the  educated  and  cultivated  man  this  power  of  judg- 
ing probabilities,  of  testing  beliefs  by  their  rationality,  is 
carried,  or  is  capable  of  being  carried,  to  the  highest  point 
of  development,  so  as  to  comprehend  in  the  calculation  the 
full  elements  of  the  question,  or  at  least  to  reduce  the 
danger  of  some  fatal  omission  to  the  minimum.  It  is,  of 
course,  true  that  the  limited  range  of  our  faculties  may  pre- 
vent a  full  view  of  all  the  elements  of  any  question  of  proba- 
bility, even  when  our  faculties  have  attained  the  highest 
point  of  development  experienced  by  the  age  in  which  we 
happen  to  live.     This  renders  the  rationality  of  any  hy- 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF.  3 

pothesis  less  than  an  absolutely  certain  test  of  truth.  But 
this  rationality  is  all  that  we  have  to  apply  to  any  question 
of  belief  ;  and  if  we  attend  carefully  to  the  fact  that  moral 
probabilities  constitute  the  groundwork  of  all  our  beliefs, 
and  note  the  mental  processes  by  which  we  reach  conclusions 
upon  any  question  depending  upon  evidence,  we  shall  find 
reason  to  regard  this  power  of  testing  beliefs  by  a  conform- 
ity between  the  hypotheses  and  that  which  is  most  probable 
to  be  the  most  glorious  attribute  of  the  human  understand- 
ing, as  it  is  unquestionably  the  safest  guide  to  which  we 
can  trust  ourselves. 

It  may  be  that,  while  philosophers  will  not  object  to 
my  definition  of  rationality,  churchmen  will  ask  what  place 
I  propose  to  assign  to  authority  in  the  formation  of  beliefs. 
I  answer,  in  the  first  place,  that  I  am  seeking  to  make  my- 
self understood  by  plain  but  reflecting  and  reasoning  people. 
Such  persons  will  ]>erceive  that  what  I  mean  by  the  ration- 
ality of  a  belief  in  any  hypothesis  is  its  fitness  to  be  accepted 
and  acted  upon  because  it  has  in  its  favor  the  strongest 
probabilities  of  the  case,  so  far  as  we  can  grasp  those  proba- 
bilities. I  know  of  no  other  foundation  for  a  belief  in  any- 
thing ;  for  belief  is  the  acceptance  by  the  mind  of  some 
proposition,  statement,  or  supposed  fact,  the  truth  of  which 
depends  upon  evidence  addressed  to  our  senses,  or  to  our 
intellectual  perceptions,  or  to  both.  In  the  next  place,  in 
regard  to  the  influence  of  authority  over  our  beliefs,  it  is 
to  be  observed  that  the  existence  of  the  authority  is  a  ques- 
tion to  be  determined  by  evidence,  and  this  question,  there- 
fore, of  itself  involves  an  application  of  the  test  of  ration- 
ality, or  conformity  with  what  is  probable.  But,  assuming 
that  the  authority  is  satisfactorily  established,  it  is  not  safe 
to  leave  all  minds  to  the  teaching  of  that  authority,  without 
the  aid  of  the  reasoning,  which,  independent  of  all  author- 
ity, would  conduct  to  the  same  conolusion.  There  are 
many  minds  to  whom  it  is  useless  to  say,  You  are  com- 


4  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

manded  to  believe.  The  question  instantly  arises.  Com- 
manded by  whom,  or  what  ?  And  if  the  answer  is,  By  the 
Church,  or  by  the  Bible,  and  the  matter  is  left  to  rest  upon 
that  statement,  there  is  great  danger  of  unbelief.  It  is 
apparent  that  a  large  amount  of  what  is  called  infidelity,  or 
unbelief,  now  prevailing  in  the  world,  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  men  are  told  that  they  are  commanded  to  believe,  as  if 
they  were  to  be  passive  recipients  of  what  is  asserted,  and 
because  so  little  is  addressed  to  their  understandings. 

I  do  not  wish  to  be  understood  as  maintaining  that 
there  is  no  place  for  authority  in  matters  of  what  is  called 
religious  belief.  I  am  quite  sensible  that  there  may  be 
such  a  thing  as  authority  even  in  regard  to  our  beliefs  ;  that 
it  is  quite  within  the  range  of  possibilities  that  there  should 
be  such  a  relation  between  the  human  soul  and  an  infinite 
Creator  as  to  require  the  creature  to  accept  by  faith  what- 
ever a  proved  revelation  requires  that  intelligent  creature 
to  believe.  But,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  what  is  specially 
called  revealed  religion  is  addressed  to  an  intelligent  creat- 
ure, to  whom  the  revelation  itself  must  be  proved  by  some 
evidence  that  will  satisfy  the  mind,  there  is  an  evident  ne- 
cessity for  treating  the  rationality  of  a  belief  in  God  as  an 
independent  question.  In  some  way,  by  some  process,  we 
must  reach  a  belief  in  the  existence  of  a  being  before  we 
can  consider  the  claims  of  a  message  which  that  being  is 
supposed  to  have  sent  to  us.  What  we  have  to  work  with, 
before  we  can  approach  the  teaching  of  what  is  called  re- 
vealed religion,  is  the  mind  of  man  and  the  material  uni- 
verse. Do  these  furnish  us  with  the  rational  basis  for  a  be- 
lief in  God  ? 

And  here  I  shall  be  expected  to  say  what  I  mean  by  a 
belief  in  God.  I  have  neither  so  little  reverence  for  what 
I  myself  believe  in,  nor  so  little  respect  for  my  readers, 
as  to  offer  them  anything  but  the  common  conception  of 
God.     All  that  is  necessary  for  me  to  do,  in  order  to  put 


BELIEF  IN  GOD.  5 

my  own  mind  in  contact  with  that  of  the  reader,  is  to  ex- 
press my  conception  of  God  just  as  it  would  be  expressed 
by  any  one  who  is  accustomed  to  think  of  the  being  called 
God  by  the  Christian,  the  Jew,  the  Mohammedan,  or  by 
some  other  branches  of  the  human  race.  These  different 
divisions  of  mankind  may  differ  in  regard  to  some  of  the 
attributes  of  the  Deity,  or  his  dealings  with  men,  or  the 
history  or  course  of  his  government  of  the  world.  But 
what  is  common  to  fhe.m  alLlg^abelief  in  God  as. the  Su- 
preme  Beingj^who  is  self-existingand  eternal,  by  whose  will 
all  things  and  alFSlier^Wltgsw^e  created,  whcrirTiifinite 
in  "power  and  wisdom  and  in  goodness  and  benevolence. 
As  an  intellectual  conception,  this  idea  of  a  Supreme  Be- 
ing, one  only  God,  who  never  had  a  beginning  and  can 
have  no  end,  and  who  is  the  creator  of  all  other  beings,  ex- 
cludes, of  course,  the  polytheism  of  the  ancient  civilized 
nations,  or  that  of  the  present  barbarous  tribes  ;  and  it  es- 
pecially excludes  the  idea  of  what  the  Greeks  called  Des- 
tiny, which  was  a  power  that  governed  the  gods  as  well  as 
the  human  race,  and  was  anterior  and  superior  to  Jove 
himself.  The  simple  conception  of  the  one  God  held  by 
the  Christian,  the  Jew,  or  the  Mohammedan,  as  the  First 
Cause  of  the  universe  and  all  that  it  embraces,  creating  all 
things  and  all  other  beings  by  his  will,  in  contrast  with 
the  modern  idea  that  they  came  into  existence  without  the 
volition  of  a  conscious  and  intelligent  being  making  special 
creations,  is  what  I  present  to  the  mind  of  the  reader. 

This  idea  of  God  as  a  matter  of  belief  presents,  I  re- 
peat, a  question  of  moral  probabilities.  The  existence  of 
the  universe  has  to  be  accounted  for  somehow.  We  can 
not  shut  out  this  inquiry  from  our  thoughts.  The  human 
being  who  never  speculates,  never  thinks,  upon  the  origin 
of  his  own  soul,  or  upon  the  genesis  of  this  wondrous 
frame  of  things  external  to  himself,  or  upon  his  relations 
to  some  superior  being,   is  a  very  rare  animal.     If  he  is 


6  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

much  more  than  an  animal,  he  will  have  some  idea  of  these 
things  ;  and  the  theories  by  which  some  of  the  most  culti- 
vated and  acute  intellects  of  our  race,  from  the  widest 
range  of  accumulated  physical  facts  and  phenomena  yet 
gathered,  have  undertaken  to  account  for  the  existence  of 
species  without  referring  them  to  the  volition  of  an  infinite' 
creator,  are  at  once  a  proof  of  the  universal  pressure  of  the 
question  of  creation  upon  the  human  mind,  and  of  the  logi- 
cal necessity  for  treating  it  as  a  question  dependent  upon 
evidence  and  probability. 

I  lay  out  of  consideration,  now,  the  longing  of  the  hu- 
man mind  to  find  a  personal  God  and  Creator.  This  senti- 
ment, this  yearning  for  an  infinite  father,  this  feeling  of 
loneliness  in  the  universe  without  the  idea  of  God,  is  cer- 
tainly an  important  moral  factor  in  the  question  of  proba- 
bility ;  but  I  omit  it  now  from  the  number  of  proofs,  be- 
cause it  is  a  sentiment,  and  because  I  wish  to  subject  the 
belief  in  God  as  the  Creator  to  the  cold  intellectual  process 
by  which  we  may  disdover  a  conformity  between  that  hy- 
pothesis and  the  phenomena  of  Nature  as  a  test  of  the 
probable  truth.  If  such  a  conformity  can  be  satisfactorily 
shown,  and  if  the  result  of  the  process  as  conducted  can 
fairly  claim  to  be  that  the  existence  of  God  the  Creator  has 
by  far  the  highest  degree  of  probability  above  and  beyond 
all  other  hypotheses  that  have  been  resorted  to  to  account 
for  our  existence,  the  satisfaction  of  a  moral  feeling  of  the 
human  heart  may  well  become  a  source  of  happiness,  a  con- 
solation in  all  the  evils  of  this  life,  and  a  support  in  the 
hour  of  death. 

But  in  this  preliminary  chapter  I  ought  to  state  what  I 
understand  to  be  the  scientific  hypothesis  or  hypotheses 
with  which  I  propose  to  contrast  the  idea  of  God  as  the 
creator  of  specres  by'gppTying  the  test  of  probability.  To 
discuss  the  superior  claims"of  one  hypothesis  over  another, 
without  showing  that  there  is  a  real  conflict  between  them. 


THEORY  OF  EVOLUTION.  Y 

would  be  to  set  up  a  man  of  straw  for  the  sake  of  knock- 
ing it  down  as  if  it  were  a  living  and  real  antagonist.  What 
I  desire  to  do  is  not  to  aim.  at  a  cheap  victory  by  attacking 
something  that  does  not  call  for  opposition ;  but  it  is  to 
ascertain  first  whether  there  is  now  current  any  explanation 
or  hypothesis  concerning  the  origin  of  the  creation,  or  any- 
thing that  it  contains,  which  rejects  the  idea  of  God  as  the 
creator  of  that  which  we  know  to  exist  and  as  it  exists,  and 
then  to  ascertain  which  of  the  two  hypotheses  ought  to  be 
accepted  as  the  truth,  because  it  has  in  its  favor  the  highest 
attainable  amount  of  probability.  There  is  an  amount  of 
probability  which  becomes  to  us  a  moral  demonstration,  be- 
cause our  minds  are  so  constituted  that  conviction  depends 
upon  the  completeness  with  which  the  evidence  in  favor  of 
one  hypothesis  excludes  the  other  from  the  category  of  ra- 
tional beliefs. 

I  pass  by  the  common  sort  of  infidelity  which  rejects 
the  idea  of  an  intelligent  creator  acting  in  any  manner 
whatever,  whether  by  special  creations  or  by  laws  of  devel- 
opment operating  on  some  primordial  form  of  animal  life. 
But  among  the  modern  scientists  who  have  propounded 
explanations  of  the  origin  of  species,  I  distinguish  those 
who  do  not,  as  I  understand,  deny  that  there  was  an  intel- 
ligent Creator  by  whose  will  some  form  of  animal  life  was 
originally  called  into  being,  but  who  maintain  that  the 
diversified  forms  of  animal  life  which  we  now  see  were  not 
brought  into  being  by  the  special  will  of  the  Creator  as  we 
now  know  them,  but  that  they  were  evolved,  by  a  process 
called  natural  selection,  out  of  some  lower  type  of  animated 
organism.  Of  this  class,  the  late  Mr.  Darwin  is  a  repre- 
sentative. There  is,  however,  at  least  one  philosopher  who 
carries  the  doctrine  of  evolution  much  farther,  and  who,  if 
I  rightly  understand  him,  rejects  any  act  of  creation,  even 
of  the  lowest  and  simplest  type  of  animal  existence.  This 
is  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer — a  writer  who,  while  he  concurs  in 


8  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

Mr.  Darwin's  general  theory  of  natural  selection  as  the  pro- 
cess by  which  distinct  organisms  have  been  evolved  out  of 
other  organisms,  does  not  admit  of  any  primal  organism 
as  the  origin  of  the  whole  series  of  animals  and  as  the  crea- 
tion of  an  intelligent  will. 

/^  It  will  be  appropriate  hereafter  to  refer  to  the  doctrine 
of  evolution  as  a  means  of  accounting  for  the  existence  of 
the  human  mind.  At  present  it  is  only  necessary  to  say 
that  I  understand  it  to  be  maintained  as  the  hypothesis 
which  has  the  highest  attainable  amount  of  evidence  in  its 
favor,  that  distinct  species  of  animals  are  not  a  creation  but 
a  growth  ;  and  also  that  the  mind  of  man  is  not  a  special 
creation  of  a  spiritual  existence,  but  a  result  of  a  long  pro- 
cess by  which  organized  matter  has  slowly  worked  itself 
from  matter  into  intellect.  Wherever,  for  instance,  these 
scientists  may  place  the  non-human  primate,  out  of  which 
man  has  been  evolved  by  what  is  called  natural  selection, 
and  whether  they  do  or  do  not  assume  that  he  was  a  crea- 
tion of  an  intelligent  will,  they  do  not,  as  I  understand, 
claim  that  the  primate  was  endowed  with  what  we  call  in- 
tellect ;  so  that  at  some  time  there  was  a  low  form  of 
animal  life  without  intellect,  but  intellect  became  evolved 
in  the  long  course  of  countless  ages,  by  the  process  of  natu- 
ral selection,  through  the  improving  conditions  and  better 
organization  of  that  low  animal  which  had  no  intellect.  In 
other  words,  we  have  what  the  scientist  calls  the  non-human 
primate,  a  low  form  of  animal  without  intellect,  but  capable 
of  so  improving  its  own  physical  organization  as  to  create 
for  itself  and  within  itself  that  essence  which  we  recognize 
as  the  human  mind.  Here,  then,  there  is  certainly  a  the- 
ory, an  hypothesis,  which  may  be  and  must  be  contrasted 
with  the  idea  that  the  mind  of  man  is  a  spiritual  essence 
created  by  the  volition  of  some  other  being  having  the 
power  to  create  such  existences,  and  put  into  a  temporary 
union  with  a  physical  organization,  by  the  establishment 


HUMAN  DIGNITY  UNIMPORTANT.  9 

of  a  mysterious  connection  which  makes  the  body  the 
instrument  of  the  soul  so  long  as  the  connection  exists. 
If  I  have  stated  correctly  the  theory  which  assigns  the  ori- 
gin of  the  human  mind  to  the  process  of  evolution,  I  have 
assuredly  not  set  up  a  man  of  straw.  I  stand  confronted 
with  an  hypothesis  which  directly  encounters  the  idea  that 
the  human  intellect  is  a  creation,  in  the  sense  of  a  direct, 
intelligent,  conscious,  and  purposed  production  of  a  special 
character,  as  the  human  mind  and  hand,  in  the  production 
of  whatever  is  permitted  to  finite  capacities,  purposely  cre- 
ates some  new  and  independent  object  of  its  wishes,  its  de- 
sires, or  its  wants.  (The  human  mind,  says  the  scientist, 
was  not  created  by  a  spiritual  being  as  a  spiritual  existence 
independent  of  matter,  but  it  grew  out  of  matter,  that  was 
at  first  so  organized  that  it  did  not  manifest  what  we  call 
intellect,  but  that  could  so  improve  its  own  organization  as 
to  evolve  out  of  matter  what  we  know  as  mind) 

And  here  I  lay  out  of  view  entirely  the  comparative  dig- 
nity of  man  as  a  being  whose  existence  is  to  be  accounted 
for  by  the  one  hypothesis  or  the  other,  because  this  com- 
parative dignity  is  not  properly  an  element  in  the  question 
of  probability.  The  doctrine  of  evolution,  as  expounded  by 
Darwin  and  other  modern  scientists,  may  be  true,  and  we 
shall  still  have  reason  to  exclaim  with  Hamlet,  '*  What  a 
piece  of  work  is  man  ! " 

On  the  other  hand,  the  hypothesis  that  man  is  a  special 
creation  of  an  infinite  workman,  if  true,  does  not  enhance 
the  mere  a  'priori  dignity  of  the  human  race.  It  may,  and 
it  will  hereafter  appear  that  it  does,  establish  the  moral  ac- 
countability of  man  to  a  supreme  being,  a  relation  which, 
if  I  correctly  understand  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  is  left 
out  of  the  system  that  supposes  intellect  to  be  evolved  out 
of  the  improving  process  by  which  matter  becomes  nerv- 
ous organization,  whose  action  exhibits  those  manifesta- 
tions which  we  call  mind.    The  moral  accountability  of 


10  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

man  to  a  supreme  being  may,  if  it  becomes  established 
by  proper  evidence,  be  a  circumstance  that  distinguishes 
him  from  other  animals,  and  may,  therefore,  raise  him  in 
the  scale  of  being.  But  then  this  dignity  is  a  fact  that 
comes  after  the  process  of  reasoning  has  shown  the  rela- 
tion of  creator  and  creature,  and  it  should  not  be  placed  at 
the  beginning  of  the  process  among  the  proofs  that  are  to 
show  that  relation.  Mr.  Darwin,  in  concluding  his  great 
work,  "  The  Descent  of  Man,"  which  he  maintains  to  have 
been  from  some  very  low  t3rpe  of  animated  creature,  through 
the  apes,  who  became  our  ancestors,  and  who  were  devel- 
oped into  the  lowest  savages,  and  finally  into  the  civilized 
man,  has  anticipated  that  his  theory  will,  he  regrets  to  say, 
be  "  highly  distasteful  to  many  "  ;  and  he  adds,  by  way  of 
parrying  this  disgust,  that  ^'he  who  has  seen  a  savage  in 
his  native  land  will  not  feel  much  shame  if  forced  to  ac- 
knowledge that  the  blood  of  some  more  humble  creature 
flows  in  his  veins."  For  his  own  part,  he  adds,  he  would 
as  soon  be  descended  from  a  certain  heroic  little  monkey 
who  exposed  himself  to  great  danger  in  order  to  save  the 
life  of  his  keeper,  as  from  a  savage  who  delights  to  torture 
his  enemies,  offers  bloody  sacrifices,  practices  infanticide, 
etc.  Waiving  for  the  present  the  question  whether  the 
man  who  is  called  civilized  is  necessarily  descended  from 
or  through  the  kind  of  savage  whom  Mr.  Darwin  saw  in  the 
Tierra  del  Fuego,  or  whether  that  kind  of  savage  is  a  de- 
teriorated offshoot  from  some  higher  human  creatures  that 
possessed  moral  and  intellectual  characteristics  of  a  more 
elevated  nature,  I  freely  concede  that  this  question  of  the 
dignity  of  our  descent  is  not  of  much  logical  consequence. 
However  distasteful  to  us  may  be  the  idea  that  we  are  de- 
scended from  the  same  stock  as  the  apes,  and  that  their  direct 
ancestors  are  to  be  traced  to  some  more  humble  creature  un- 
til we  reach  the  lowest  form  of  organized  and  animated  mat- 
ter, the  dignity  of  our  human  nature  is  not  to  be  reckoned 


CONFLICT  BETWEEN  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.     H 

among  the  probabilities  by  which  our  existence  is  to  be  ac- 
counted for.  It  is,  in  this  respect,  like  the  feeling  or  senti- 
ment which  prompts  us  to  wish  to  find  an  infinite  creator, 
the  father  of  our  spirits  and  the  creator  of  our  bodies.  As 
a  matter  of  reasoning,  we  must  prove  to  ourselves,  by  evi- 
dence that  satisfies  the  mind,  that  God  exists.  Having 
reached  this  conviction,  the  belief  in  his  existence  becomes 
a  vast  and  inestimable  treasure.  But  our  wish  to  believe  in 
God  does  not  help  us  to  attain  that  belief.  In  the  same 
way  our  feeling  about  the  dignity  of  man,  the  nobleness  or 
ignobleness  of  our  descent  from  or  through  one  kind  of 
creature  or  another,  may  be  a  satisfaction  or  a  dissatisfac- 
tion after  we  have  reached  a  conclusion,  but  it  affords  us  no 
aid  in  arriving  at  a  satisfactory  conclusion  from  properly 
chosen  premises. 

And  here,  in  advance  of  the  tests  which  I  shall  endeavor 
to  apply  to  the  existence  of  God  and  the  existence  of  man 
as  a  special  creation,  I  desire  to  say  something  respecting 
the  question  of  a  logical  antagonism  between  science  and 
religion.  I  have  often  been  a  good  deal  puzzled  to  make 
out  what  those  well-meaning  persons  suppose,  who  unwarily 
admit  that  there  is  no  necessary  antagonism  between  what 
modem  science  teaches  and  what  religion  teaches.  Whether 
there  is  or  is  not,  depends  upon  what  we  mean  by  science 
and  religion.  If  by  science  we  understand  the  investigation 
of  Nature,  or  a  study  of  the  structure  and  conditions  of 
everything  that  we  can  subject  to  the  observation  of  our 
senses,  and  the  deduction  of  certain  hypotheses  from  what 
we  observe,  then  we  must  compare  the  hypotheses  with  the 
teachings  or  conclusions  which  we  derive  from  religion. 
The  next  question,  therefore,  is.  What  is  religion  ?  If  we 
make  it  to  consist  in  the  Mosaic  account  of  the  creation, 
or  in  the  teachings  of  the  Bible  respecting  God,  we  shall 
find  that  we  have  to  deal  with  more  or  less  of  conflict  be- 
tween the  interpretations  that  are  put  upon  a  record  sup- 


12  CEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

posed  to  have  been  inspired,  and  the  conclusions  of  science. 
But  if  we  lay  aside  what  is  commonly  understood  by  re- 
vealed religion,  which  supposes  a  special  communication 
from  a  superior  to  an  inferior  being  of  something  which 
the  former  desires  the  latter  to  know,  after  the  latter  has 
been  for  some  time  in  existence,  then  we  mean  by  religion 
that  belief  in  the  existence  of  a  superior  being  which  we 
derive  from  the  exercise  of  our  reasoning  powers  upon 
whatever  comes  within  the  observation  of  our  senses, 
and  upon  our  own  intellectual  faculties.  In  other  words, 
for  what  we  call  natural  religion,  we  look  both  out- 
ward and  inward,  in  search  of  a  belief  in  a  Supreme 
Being.  We  look  outward,  because  the  whole  universe 
is  a  vast  array  of  facts,  from  which  conclusions  are  to 
be  drawn ;  and  among  this  array  of  facts  is  the  construc- 
tion of  our  bodies.  We  look  inward,  because  our  own 
minds  present  another  array  of  facts  from  which  conclu- 
sions are  to  be  drawn.  Now,  if  the  conclusions  which  the 
scientist  draws  from  the  widest  observation  of  Nature,  in- 
cluding the  human  mind  itself,  fail  to  account  for  the  exist- 
ence of  the  mind  of  man,  and  natural  religion  does  account 
for  it,  there  is  an  irreconcilable  conflict  between  science 
and  religion.  I  can  not  avoid  the  conviction  that  Mr.  Dar- 
win has  missed  the  point  of  this  conflict.  '^  I  am  aware," 
he  says,  "that  the  conclusions  arrived  at  in  this  work  will 
be  denounced  by  some  as  highly  irreligious  ;  but  he  who 
denounces  them  is  bound  to  show  why  it  is  more  irreligious 
to  explain  the  origin  of  man,  as  a  distinct  species  by  descent 
from  a  lower  form,  through  the  laws  of  variation  and  nat- 
ural selection,  than  to  explain  the  birth  of  the  individual 
through  the  laws  of  ordinary  reproduction."  I  do  not  un- 
derstand him,  by  the  terms  "religious"  or  "irreligious," 
to  refer  to  anything  that  involves  praise  or  blame  for  adopt- 
ing one  hypothesis  rather  than  another.  I  suppose  he 
meant  to  say  that  a  belief  in  his  theory  of  the  descent  of 


DARWINISM.  13 

man  as  a  species  is  no  more  inconsistent  with  a  belief  in 
God  than  it  is  to  belieye  that  the  indiyidual  is  brought 
into  being  through  the  operation  of  the  laws  of  ordinary 
reproduction  which  God  has  established.  This  would  be 
strictly  true,  if  the  hypothesis  of  man's  descent  as  a  dis- 
tinct species  from  some  lower  form  accounted  for  his  exist- 
ence by  proofs  that  satisfy  the  rules  of  evidence  by  which 
our  beliefs  ought  to  be  and  must  be  determined.  In  that 
case,  there  would  be  no  inconsistency  between  his  hy- 
pothesis and  that  to  which  natural  religion  conducts  us. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  the  Darwinian  hypothesis  fails  to 
establish  a  relation  between  the  soul  of  man,  as  a  special 
creation,  and  a  competent  creator,  then  the  antagonism  be- 
tween this  hypothesis  and  natural  religion  is  direct,  imme- 
diate, and  irreconcilable  ;  for  the  essence  of  religion  consists 
in  that  relation,  and  a  belief  in  that  relation  is  what  we 
mean,  or  ought  to  mean,  by  religion. 

There  is  another  form  in  which  Mr.  Darwin  has  depre- 
ciated the  idea  of  any  antagonism  between  his  theory  and 
our  religious  ideas,  but  it  has  the  same  logical  defect  as  the 
suggestion  which  I  have  just  considered,  because  it  involves 
the  same  assumption.  It  is  put  hypothetically,  but  it  is  still 
an  assumption,  lacking  the  very  elements  of  supreme  prob- 
ability that  can  alone  give  it  force.  "  Man,"  he  observes, 
"  may  be  excused  for  feeling  some  pride  at  having  risen, 
not  through  his  own  exertions,  to  the  very  summit  of  the 
organic  scale  ;  and  the  fact  of  his  having  so  risen,  instead 
of  being  aboriginally  placed  there,  may  give  him  some  hope 
for  a  still  higher  destiny  in  the  distant  future."  I  certain- 
ly would  not  misrepresent,  and  I  earnestly  desire  to  under- 
stand, this  distinguished  writer.  It  is  a  little  uncertain 
whether  he  here  refers  to  the  hope  of  immortality,  or  of  an 
existence  after  the  connection  between  our  minds  and  our 
bodies  is  dissolved,  or  whether  he  refers  to  the  further  ele- 
vation of  man  on  this  earth  in  the  distant  future  of  terres- 


14  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

trial  time.  If  lie  referred  to  the  hope  of  an  existence  after 
what  we  call  death,  then  he  ought  to  have  shown  that  his 
theory  is  compatible  with  such  a  continued  existence  of  the 
soul  of  man.  It  will  be  one  of  the  points  on  which  I  pro- 
pose to  bestow  some  attention,  that  the  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion is  entirely  incompatible  with  the  existence  of  the 
human  soul  for  one  instant  after  the  brain  has  ceased  to  act 
as  an  organism,  and  death  has  wholly  supervened  ;  because 
that  doctrine,  if  I  understand  it  rightly,  regards  the  intel- 
lect of  man  as  a  high  development  of  what  in  other  animals 
is  called  instinct,  and  instinct  as  a  confirmed  and  inherited 
habit  of  animal  organism  to  act  in  a  certain  way.  If  this 
is  a  true  philosophical  account  of  the  origin  and  nature  of 
intellect,  it  can  have  no  possible  individual  existence  after 
the  organ  called  the  brain,  which  has  been  in  the  habit  of 
acting  in  a  certain  way,  has  perished,  any  more  than  there 
can  be  a  digestion  of  food  after  the  stomach  or  other  as- 
similating organ  has  been  destroyed.  If,  on  the  contrary, 
the  mind  of  man  is  a  special  creation,  of  a  spiritual  essence, 
placed  in  an  intimate  union  with  the  body  for  a  temporary 
period,  and  made  to  depend  for  a  time  on  the  organs  of 
that  body  as  its  means  of  manifestation  and  the  exercise  of 
its  spiritual  faculties,  then  it  is  conceivable  that  this  union 
may  be  severed  and  the  mind  may  survive.  Not  only  is 
this  conceivable,  but,  as  I  shall  endeavor  hereafter  to  show, 
the  proof  of  it  rises  very  high  in  the  scale  of  probability — 
so  high  that  we  may  accept  it  as  a  fact,  just  as  confidently 
as  we  accept  many  things  of  which  we  can  not  have  abso- 
lute certainty. 

And  here  I  think  it  needful,  although  not  for  all  read- 
ers, but  for  the  great  majority,  to  lay  down  as  distinctly  as 
I  can  the  rules  of  evidence  which  necessarily  govern  our 
beliefs.  I  do  so  because,  in  reading  the  works  of  many  of 
the  modem  scientists  who  have  espoused  the  Darwinian 
doctrine  of  evolution,  I  find  that  the  rules  of  evidence  are 


RULES  OF  EYIDENOE.  15 

but  little  observed.  There  is  a  yery  great,  often  an  aston- 
ishingly great,  accumulation  of  facts,  or  of  assumed  facts. 
It  is  impossible  not  to  be  impressed  by  the  learning,  the  in- 
dustry, and  the  range  of  these  writers.  Nor  would  I  in  the 
least  impugn  their  candor,  or  question  their  accuracy  as 
witnesses  of  facts,  which  I  am  not  competent  to  dispute  if 
I  were  disposed  to  do  so.  But  there  is  one  thing  for  which 
I  may  suppose  myself  competent.  I  have  through  a  long 
life  been  accustomed  to  form  conclusions  upon  facts ;  and 
this  is  what  every  person  does  and  must  do  who  is  asked  to 
accept  a  new  theory  or  hypothesis  of  any  kind  upon  any 
subject. 

Most  of  our  beliefs  depend  upon  what  is  called  circum- 
stantial evidence.  There  are  very  few  propositions  which 
address  themselves  to  our  belief  upon  one  direct  and  iso- 
lated proof.  We  may  class  most  of  the  perceptions  of  our 
senses  among  the  simple  and  unrelated  proofs  which  we 
accept  without  hesitation,  although  there  is  more  or  less  of 
an  unconscious  and  instantaneous  process  of  reasoning, 
through  which  we  pass  before  the  evidence  of  our  senses  is 
accepted  and  acted  upon.  Then  there  are  truths  to  which 
we  yield  an  instant  assent,  because  they  prove  themselves, 
as  is  the  case  with  the  mathematical  or  geometrical  prob- 
lems, as  soon  as  we  perceive  the  connection  in  the  steps  of 
the  demonstration.  Besides  these,  there  are  many  proposi- 
tions which,  although  they  involve  moral  reasoning,  have 
become  axioms  about  which  we  do  not  care  to  inquire,  but 
which  we  assume  to  have  been  so  repeatedly  and  firmly 
established  that  it  would  be  a  waste  of  time  to  go  over  the 
ground  again  whenever  they  come  up./  But  there  is  a 
very  large  class  of  propositions  which  address  themselves 
to  our  belief,  which  do  not  depend  on  a  single  perception 
through  our  senses,  and  are  not  isolated  facts,  and  are  not 
demonstrable  by  mathematical  truth,  and  are  not  axioms 
accepted  because  they  were  proved  long  ago,  and  have  by 


16  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

general  consent  been  adopted  into  the  common  stock  of 
ideas.  The  class  of  beliefs  with  which  the  rules  of  circum- 
stantial eyidence  are  concerned  are  those  where  the  truth 
of  the  proposition,  or  hypothesis,  is  a  deduction  from 
many  distinct  facts,  but  the  coexistence  of  which  facts 
leads  to  the  inevitable  conclusion  that  the  proposition  or 
hypothesis  is  true.  We  can  not  tell  why  it  is  that  moral 
conviction  is  forced  upon  us  by  the  coexistence  of  certain 
facts  and  their  tendency  to  establish  a  certain  conclusion. 
All  we  know  is,  that  our  minds  are  so  constituted  that  we 
can  not  resist  the  force  of  circumstantial  evidence  if  we 
suffer  our  faculties  to  act  as  reason  has  taught  them.  But, 
then,  in  any  given  case,  whether  we  ought  to  yield  our 
belief  in  anything  where  we  have  only  circumstantial  evi- 
dence to  guide  us,  there  are  certain  rules  to  be  observed. 
The  first  of  these  rules  is,  that  every  fact  in  a  collection  of 
proofs  from  which  we  are  to  draw  a  certain  inference  must 
be  proved  independently  by  direct  evidence,  and  must  not 
be  itself  a  deduction  from  some  other  fact.  This  is  the 
first  step  in  the  process  of  arranging  a  chain  of  moral  evi- 
dence. There  is  a  maxim  in  this  branch  of  the  law  of 
evidence  that  you  can  not  draw  an  inference  from  an  in- 
ference. In  other  words,  you  can  not  infer  a  fact  from 
some  other  fact,  and  then  unite  the  former  with  two  or 
more  independent  facts  to  make  a  chain  of  proofs.  Every 
link  in  the  chain  must  have  its  separate  existence,  and  its 
existence  must  be  established  by  the  same  kind  and  degree 
of  evidence  as  if  it  were  the  only  thing  to  be  proved.  The 
next  rule  is  to  place  the  several  facts,  when  so  proved,  in 
their  proper  relation  to  each  other  in  the  group  from  which 
the  inference  is  to  be  drawn.  In  circumstantial  evidence  a 
fact  may  be  established  by  the  most  direct  and  satisfactory 
proofs,  and  yet  it  may  have  no  relation  to  other  facts  with 
which  you  attempt  to  associate  it.  For  example,  suppose 
it  to  be  proved  that  A  on  a  certain  occasion  bought  a  cer- 


RULES  OF  EVIDENCE.  17 

tain  poison,  and  that  soon  after  B  died  of  that  kind  of 
poison ;  bnt  it  does  not  appear  that  A  and  B  were  ever 
seen  together,  or  stood  in  any  relation  to  each  other.  The 
fact  that  A  bought  poison  would  have  no  proper  relation 
to  the  other  fact  that  B  died  of  that  kind  of  poison.  But 
introduce  by  independent  evidence  the  third  fact,  that  A 
knew  B  intimately,  and  then  add  the  fourth  fact,  that  A 
had  a  special  motive  for  wishing  B's  death,  you  have  some 
ground  for  believing  that  A  poisoned  B,  although  no  human 
eye  ever  saw  the  poison  administered.  From  this  correla- 
tion of  all  the  facts  in  a  body  of  circumstantial  evidence, 
there  follows  a  third  rule,  namely,  that  the  whole  collec- 
tion of  facts,  in  order  to  justify  the  inference  sought  to  be 
drawn  from  them,  must  be  consistent  with  that  inference. 
Thus,  the  four  facts  above  supposed  are  entirely  consistent 
with  the  hjrpothesis  that  A  poisoned  B.  But  leave  out  the 
two  intermediate  facts,  or  leave  out  the  last  one,  and  B 
might  as  well  have  been  poisoned  by  C  as  by  A.  Hence 
there  is  a  fourth  rule :  that  the  collection  of  facts  from 
which  an  inference  is  to  be  drawn  must  not  only  be  con- 
sistent with  the  probable  truth  of  that  inference,  but  they 
must  exclude  the  probable  truth  of  any  other  inference. 
Thus,  not  only  must  it  be  shown  that  A  bought  poison, 
that  B  died  of  poison,  that  A  was  intimate  with  B  and  had 
a  motive  for  wishing  B's  death,  but,  to  justify  a  belief  in 
A's  guilt,  the  motive  ought  to  be  shown  to  have  been  so 
strong  as  to  exclude  the  moral  probability  that  B  was  poi- 
soned by  some  one  else,  or  poisoned  himself.  It  is  in  the 
application  of  these  rules  that  in  courts  of  justice  the  minds 
of  jurymen  often  become  perplexed  with  doubts  which  they 
can  not  account  for,  or  else  they  yield  a  too  easy  credence 
to  the  guilt  of  the  accused  when  the  question  of  guilt  de- 
pends upon  circumstantial  evidence. 

I  shall  not  spend  much  time  in  contending  that  these 
rules  of  evidence  must  be  applied  to  scientific  investigations 


18  CREATIOIT  OR  EVOLUTION? 

which  are  to  affect  our  belief  in  such  a  proposition  as  the 
descent  of  man  from  a  common  ancestor  with  the  monkey. 
This  is  not  only  an  hypothesis  depending  upon  circumstan- 
tial evidence,  but  it  is  professedly  a  deduction  from  a  great 
range  of  facts  and  from  a  yery  complex  state  of  facts.  In 
reasoning  upon  such  subjects,  when  the  facts  which  consti- 
tute the  chain  of  circumstantial  evidence  are  very  numer- 
ous, we  are  apt  to  regard  their  greater  comparative  number 
as  if  it  dispensed  with  a  rigid  application  of  the  rules  of  de- 
termination. Every  one  can  see,  in  the  illustration  above 
employed,  borrowed  from  criminal  jurisprudence,  that  the 
facts  which  constitute  the  chain  of  circumstantial  evidence 
ought  to  be  rigidly  tested  by  the  rules  of  determination  be- 
fore the  guilt  of  the  accused  can  be  safely  drawn  as  a  deduc- 
tion from  the  facts.  But,  in  reasoning  from  physical  facts 
to  any  given  physical  hypothesis  where  the  facts  are  very 
numerous,  there  is  a  strong  tendency  to  relax  the  rules  of 
evidence,  because,  the  greater  the  accumulation  of  supposed 
facts  becomes,  the  greater  is  the  danger  of  placing  in  the 
chain  of  evidence  something  that  is  not  proved,  and  thus  of 
vitiating  the  whole  process.  To  this  tendency,  which  I  have 
observed  to  be  very  frequent  among  scientists,  I  should  ap- 
ply, without  meaning  any  disrespect,  the  terra  invention. 
A  great  accumulation  of  facts  is  made,  following  one  another 
in  a  certain  order ;  all  those  which  precede  a  certain  inter- 
mediate link  are  perhaps  duly  and  independently  proved, 
and  the  same  may  be  the  case  with  those  which  follow  that 
link.  But  there  is  no  proof  of  the  fact  that  constitutes  the 
link  and  makes  a  complete  chain  of  evidence.  This  vacuity 
of  proof,  if  one  may  use  such  an  expression,  is  constantly  oc- 
curring in  the  writings  of  naturalists,  and  is  often  candidly 
admitted.  It  is  gotten  over  by  reasoning  from  the  ante- 
cedent and  the  subsequent  facts  that  the  intermediate  facts 
must  have  existed ;  and  then  the  reasoning  goes  on  to  draw 
the  inference  of  the  principal  hypothesis  from  a  chain  of 


MISSING  LINKS.  19 

proof  in  which  a  necessary  intermediate  link  is  itself  a  mere 
inference  from  facts  which  may  be  just  as  consistent  with 
the  non-existence  as  with  the  existence  of  the  supposed 
intermediate  link.  In  such  cases  we  are  often  told  very 
frankly  that  no  one  has  yet  discovered  that  the  intermediate 
link  ever  actually  existed ;  that  the  researches  of  science 
have  not  yet  reached  demonstrative  proof  of  the  existence 
of  a  certain  intermediate  animal  or  vegetable  organization  ; 
that  geological  exploration  has  not  yet  revealed  to  us  all  the 
specimens  of  the  animal  or  vegetable  kingdoms  that  may 
have  inhabited  this  globe  at  former  periods  of  time ;  but 
that  the  analogies  which  lead  down  or  lead  up  to  that  as 
yet  undiscovered  link  in  the  chain  are  such  that  it  must 
have  existed,  and  that  we  may  confidently  expect  that  the 
actual  proof  of  it  will  be  found  hereafter.  The  difficulty 
with  this  kind  of  reasoning  is  that  it  borrows  from  the  main 
hypothesis  which  one  seeks  to  establish  the  means  of  show- 
ing the  facts  from  which  the  hypothesis  is  to  be  drawn  as 
an  inference.  Thus,  for  example,  the  hypothesis  is  that 
the  species  called  man  is  a  highly  developed  animal  formed 
by  a  process  of  natural  selection  that  went  on  for  unknown 
ages  among  the  individuals  descended  from  the  progenitor 
of  the  anthropomorphous  apes.  The  facts  in  the  physical 
organization  and  mental  manifestations  of  the  animal  called 
man,  when  viewed  historically  through  all  the  conditions 
in  which  we  know  anything  of  this  species,  lead  up  to  that 
common  supposed  ancestor  of  the  apes.  The  facts  in  the 
physical  organization  and  instinctive  habits  of  the  ape, 
when  viewed  historically  through  all  the  conditions  in 
which  we  know  anything  of  his  species,  show  that  he,  too, 
was  evolved  by  the  process  of  natural  selection  out  of  that 
same  ancestor.  Intermediate,  respectively,  between  the 
man  and  the  monkey  and  their  primordial  natural-selec- 
tion ancestor  or  predecessor,  there  are  links  in  the  chain 
of  proof  of  which  we  have  no  evidence,  and  which  must 


20  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

be  supplied  bj  inferring  their  existence  from  the  analo- 
gies which  we  can  trace  in  comparing  things  of  which 
we  have  some  satisfactory  proof.  Thus,  the  main  hy- 
pothesis, the  theory  of  natural  selection  as  the  explana- 
tion of  the  existence  of  distinct  species  of  animals,  is  not 
drawn  from  a  complete  chain  of  established  facts,  but  it 
is  helped  out  by  inferring  from  facts  that  are  proved 
other  facts  that  are  not  proved,  but  which  we  have  reason 
to  expect  will  be  discovered  hereafter.  I  need  not  say 
that  this  kind  of  argument  will  not  do  in  the  common 
affairs  of  life,  and  that  no  good  reason  can  be  shown  why 
our  beliefs  in  matters  of  science  should  be  made  to  depend 
upon  it. 

We  do  not  rest  our  belief  in  what  is  called  the  law  of 
gravitation  upon  any  chain  of  proof  in  which  it  is  necessary 
to  supply  a  link  by  assuming  that  it  exists.  .  The  theory 
that  bodies  have  a  tendency  to  approach  each  other,  that 
the  larger  mass  attracts  to  itself  the  smaller  by  a  mysterious 
force  that  operates  through  all  space,  is  a  deduction  from 
a  great  multitude  of  perpetually  recurring  facts  that  are 
open  to  our  observation,  no  one  of  which  is  inferred  from 
any  other  fact,  while  the  whole  excludes  the  moral  proba- 
bility that  any  other  hypothesis  will  account  for  the  phe- 
nomena which  are  continually  and  invariably  taking  place 
around  us. 

This  illustration  of  the  rules  of  evidence,  when  ap- 
plied to  scientific  inquiries,  leads  me  to  refer  to  one  of  the 
favorite  postulates  of  the  evolution  school.  We  are  often 
told  that  it  ought  to  be  no  objection  to  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  that  it  is  new,  or  startling,  or  contrary  to  other 
previous  theories  of  the  existence  of  species.  We  are  re- 
minded again  and  again  that  Galileo's  grand  conception  was 
scouted  as  an  irreligious  as  well  as  an  irrational  hypothe- 
sis, and  that  the  same  reception  attended  the  first  pro- 
mulgation of  many  scientific  truths  which  no  intelligent 


TRUE  OFFICE  OF  EXPERTS.  21 

and  well-informed  person  now  doubts.*  Then  we  have  it 
asserted  that  the  doctrine  of  eyolution  is  now  accepted  by 
nearly  all  the  most  advanced  and  accomplished  natural 
philosophers,  especially  those  of  the  rising  scientists  who 
have  bestowed  most  attention  upon  it.  Upon  this  there 
are  two  things  to  be  said  :  First,  it  is  a  matter  of  very 
little  consequence  that  the  learned  of  a  former  age  did  not 
attend  to  the  proofs  of  the  law  of  gravitation,  or  of  any 
other  new  theory  of  physics,  as  they  should  have  done,  and 
that  they  consequently  rejected  it.  Their  logical  habits  of 
mind,  their  preconceived  religious  notions,  and  many  other 
disturbing  causes,  rendered  them  incapable  of  correct  reason- 
ing on  some  particular  subject,  while  they  could  reason  with 
entire  correctness  on  other  subjects.     Secondly,  the  extent 

♦Galileo's  "heresy,"  that  the  earth  moves  round  the  sun,  was  con- 
demned by  a  papal  decree  in  the  sixteenth  century  as  "  absurd,  philosoph- 
ically  false,  and  formally  heretical,  because  it  is  expressly  contrary  to  Holy 
Scripture."  No  Roman  Catholic  now  dreams  of  disputing  what  the  Floren- 
tine astronomer  maintained  ;  and  the  evolutionists  are  perpetually  foretell- 
ing that  the  time  will  come  when  to  question  their  doctrine  will  be  admitted 
to  be  as  ridiculous  as  was  the  papal  interdict  fulminated  against  Galileo. 
If  their  doctrine  had  nothing  to  confront  it  but  a  similar  condemnation, 
proceeding  from  some  ecclesiastical  authority  claiming  to  be  "  infallible," 
or,  if  it  could  be  met  only  by  the  assertion  that  it  is  "  contrary  to  Holy 
Scripture,"  there  would  be  some  analogy  between  the  two  cases.  But  there 
is  a  vast  unlikeness  between  the  two  cases.  While  the  hypothesis  of  ani- 
mal evolution  is  plainly  enough  "  contrary  to  Holy  Scripture,"  no  one  who 
has  any  perception  of  the  weakness  of  its  proofs  is  obliged  to  rest  his 
rejection  of  it  on  that  ground.  If,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  there  had  been 
as  good  scientific  and  physical  grounds  on  which  to  refute  Galileo  as  there 
now  are  for  questioning  the  doctrine  of  the  evolution  of  distinct  species  out 
of  other  species,  the  papal  condemnation  would  have  been  superfluous  even 
for  churchmen.  We  must  not  forget  the  age  in  which  we  live,  or  allow 
any  kind  of  truth  to  fail  of  vindication,  from  fear  of  being  classed  with  those 
who  in  some  former  age  have  blunderingly  mistaken  the  means  of  vindi- 
cating truth.  Belief  in  special  creations,  whatever  the  Bible  may  say,  does 
not  now,  and  in  all  probability  never  will,  stand  on  a  par  with  the  belief 
that  the  sun  moves  round  the  earth. 


22  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

to  which  a  new  theory  is  accepted  by  those  whose  special 
studies  lead  them  to  make  the  necessary  inyestigations, 
does  not  dispense  with  the  application  of  the  laws  of  evi- 
dence to  the  facts  which  are  supposed  to  establish  the 
theory.  The  doctrine  of  eyolution  addresses  itself  not 
only  to  the  scientific  naturalist,  but  to  the  whole  intelligent 
part  of  mankind.  How  is  one  who  does  not  belong  to  this 
class  of  investigators  to  regulate  his  belief  in  the  theory 
which  they  propound  ?  Is  he  to  take  it  on  their  authority  ? 
or  is  he,  while  he  accords  to  their  statements  of  facts  all 
the  assent  which  as  witnesses  they  are  entitled  to  expect 
from  him,  to  apply  to  their  deduction  the  same  principles 
of  belief  that  he  applies  to  everything  else  which  challenges 
belief,  and  to  assent  or  dissent  accordingly  ?  No  one,  I 
presume,  will  question  that  the  latter  is  the  only  way  in 
which  any  new  matter  of  belief  should  be  approached.  I 
have  not  supposed  that  any  scientist  questions  this  ;  but  I 
have  referred  to  the  constant  iteration  that  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  is  now  generally  admitted  by  men  of  science, 
that  the  assertion,  supposing  it  to  be  true,  may  pass  for  just 
what  it  is  worth.  It  is  worth  this  and  no  more  :  that 
candid,  truthful,  and  competent  witnesses,  when  they  speak 
of  facts  that  they  have  observed,  are  entitled  to  be  believed 
as  to  the  existence  of  those  facts.  When  they  assume  facts 
which  they  do  not  prove,  but  which  are  essential  links  in 
the  chain  of  evidence,  or  when  the  facts  which  they  do 
prove  do  not  rationally  exclude  every  other  hypothesis 
excepting  their  own,  the  authority  of  even  the  whole  body 
of  such  persons  is  of  no  more  account  than  that  of  any 
other  class  of  intelligent  and  cultivated  men.  In  the  ages 
when  ecclesiastical  authority  exercised  great  power  over  the 
beliefs  of  men  upon  questions  of  physical  science,  the  su- 
periority was  accorded  to  the  authority  which  claimed  it, 
and  the  scientist  who  propounded  a  new  physical  theory 
that  did  not  suit  the  theologian  was  overborne.    It  seems 


VALUE  OF  NATURAL  THEOLOGY.       23 

to  me  that  it  is  a  tendency  of  the  present  age  to  substitute 
the  authority  of  scientific  experts  in  the  place  of  the  eccle- 
siastical authority  of  former  periods,  by  demanding  that 
something  more  than  the  ofifice  of  witnesses  of  facts  shall 
be  accorded  to  them.  We  are  told  that  it  is  a  very  impor- 
tant proof  of  the  soundness  of  deductions,  that  the  deduc- 
tions are  drawn  by  the  greater  number  of  the  specialists 
who  have  examined  the  facts.  Sometimes  this  is  carried 
BO  far  as  to  imply  presumption  in  those  who  do  not  yield 
assent  to  the  theory,  as  if  it  ought  to  be  accepted  upon  the 
authority  of  the  experts  whose  proper  office  it  is  to  furnish 
us  with  the  facts,  and  whose  deductions  we  have  to  examine 
upon  the  strength  of  their  reasoning.  Those  of  us  who  are 
not  professors  of  the  particular  science  may  be  charged  with 
ignorance  or  incapacity  if  we  do  not  join  in  the  current  of 
scientific  opinion.  But,  after  all,  the  new  theory  challenges 
our  belief.  If  we  examine  it  at  all,  we  must  judge  of  it, 
not  by  the  numbers  of  those  who  propound  or  accept  it, 
or  by  any  amount  of  mere  authority,  but  by  the  soundness 
of  the  reasoning  by  which  its  professors  support  it. 

The  reader  is  now  informed  of  what  he  may  expect  to 
find  discussed  in  this  volume.  It  remains  for  me  to  indi- 
cate the  mode  in  which  the  discussion  will  be  carried  on. 
I  propose  to  divest  my  own  mind,  and  so  far  as  I  may 
to  divest  the  mind  of  the  reader,  of  all  influence  from  re- 
vealed religion.  I  shall  not  refer  to  the  Mosaic  account  of 
the  creation  excepting  as  I  refer  to  other  hjrpotheses.  With 
its  authority  as  an  account  given  by  the  Deity  himself 
through  his  chosen  servant,  I  have  here  nothing  to  do. 
Nor  shall  I  rely  upon  the  revelation  recorded  in  the  New 
Testament.  All  the  inquiries  which  I  propose  to  make 
are  those  which  lie  in  the  domain  of  natural  religion  ; 
and  while  I  can  not  expect,  in  exploring  this  domain, 
to  make  discoveries  or  to  find  arguments  which  can  claim 
the  merit  of  originality,  I  may  avoid  traveling  in  a  well- 


24  OEEATIOI^  OR  EVOLUTION? 

beaten  path,  by  pursuing  the  line  of  my  own  reflections, 
without  considering  whether  they  coincide  with  or  differ 
from  the  reasonings  of  others.  Although,  at  a  former 
period  of  my  life,  I  have  studied  the  great  writers  whose 
speculations  in  the  science  of  natural  theology  are  the  most 
famous  and  important  pieces  in  its  literature,  it  is  more 
than  forty  years  since  I  have  looked  into  one  of  them  ;  and 
I  do  not  propose  to  turn  to  them  now,  in  order  to  see 
whether  they  have  or  have  not  left  any  traces  in  my  mind. 
It  is  quite  possible  that  critics  may  array  against  me  the 
authority  of  some  great  name  or  names  ;  but  even  if  I  am 
to  be  charged  with  presumption  in  entering  upon  this  field, 
it  will  not  be  found,  so  far  as  I  am  conscious,  that  I  have 
borrowed  an  argument,  imitated  a  method,  or  followed  an 
example. 

There  is  a  passage  in  one  of  the  writings  of  Lord  Ma- 
caulay  in  which  that  brilliant  essayist  maintained  that 
natural  theology  is  not  a  progressive  science.  Macaulay's 
tendency  to  paradox  was  often  aggravated  by  the  super- 
ficial way  in  which  he  used  his  multifarious  knowledge. 
As  in  the  course  of  this  work  I  am  about  to  do  that  which 
he  regarded  as  idle,  namely,  to  inquire  whether  natural  re- 
ligion, aside  from  revelation,  is  of  any  value  as  a  means  of 
reaching  a  belief  in  the  existence  and  attributes  of  God  and 
the  immortality  of  man,  I  cite  the  passage  in  which  Ma- 
caulay  makes  the  assertion  that  natural  theology  has  made 
no  progress  from  the  time  of  the  Greek  philosophers  to  the 
present  day  :  "As  respects  natural  religion,  revelation  be- 
ing for  the  present  altogether  left  out  of  the  question,  it  is 
not  easy  to  see  that  a  philosopher  of  the  present  day  is 
more  favorably  situated  than  Thales  or  Simonides.  He  has 
before  him  just  the  same  evidences  of  design  in  the  struct- 
ure of  the  universe  that  the  early  Greeks  had.  We  say  just 
the  same,  for  the  discoveries  of  modern  astronomers  and 
anatomists  have  really  added  nothing  to  the  force  of  that 


MACAULAY  ON  NATURAL  THEOLOGY.  25 

argument  which  a  reflecting  mind  finds  in  every  beast,  bird, 
insect,  fish,  leaf,  flower,  and  shelL  The  reasoning  by  which 
Socrates  in  Xenophon's  hearing  confuted  the  little  atheist 
Aristophanes,  is  exactly  the  reasoning  of  Paley's  '  Natural 
Theology.'  Socrates  makes  precisely  the  same  use  of  the 
statues  of  Polycletus  and  the  pictures  of  Zeuxis  which  Paley 
makes  of  the  watch.  As  to  the  other  great  question,  the 
question  what  becomes  of  man  after  death,  we  do  not  see 
that  a  highly  educated  European,  left  to  his  unassisted  rea- 
son, is  more  likely  to  be  in  the  right  than  a  Blackfoot  Indian. 
Not  a  single  one  of  the  many  sciences  in  which  we  surpass 
the  Blackfoot  Indians  throws  the  smallest  light  on  the 
state  of  the  soul  after  the  animal  life  is  extinct.  In  truth, 
all  the  philosophers,  ancient  and  modern,  who  have  at- 
tempted without  the  aid  of  revelation  to  prove  the  immor- 
tality of  man,  from  Plato  down  to  Franklin,  appear  to  us 
to  have  failed  deplorably. 

"  Then,  again,  all  the  great  enigmas  which  perplex  the 
natural  theologian  are  the  same  in  all  ages.  The  ingenuity 
of  a  people  just  emerging  from  barbarism  is  quite  suflBcient 
to  propound  those  enigmas.  The  genius  of  Locke' or  Clarke 
is  quite  unable  to  solve  them.  It  is  a  mistake  to  imagine 
that  subtile  speculations  touching  the  Divine  attributes, 
the  origin  of  evil,  the  necessity  of  human  actions,  the  foun- 
dation of  moral  obligation,  imply  any  high  degree  of  in- 
tellectual culture.  Such  speculations,  on  the  contrary,  are 
in  a  peculiar  manner  the  delight  of  intelligent  children  and 
of  half-civilized  men.  The  number  of  boys  is  not  small 
who,  at  fourteen,  have  thought  enough  on  these  questions 
to  be  fully  entitled  to  the  praise  which  Voltaire  gives  to 
Zadig  :  *  II  en  savait  ce  qu'on  a  su  dans  tons  les  ages ;  c'est 
d  dire,  fort  peu  de  chose.' 

"The  book  of  Job  shows  that,  long  before  letters  and 
arts  were  known  to  Ionia,  these  vexing  questions  were 
debated  with  no  common  skill  and  eloquence  under  the 


26  OREATIOi^  OR  EVOLUTION? 

tents  of  the  Idumean  emirs  ;  nor  has  human  reason,  in 
the  course  of  three  thousand  years,  discovered  any  satis- 
factory sohition  of  the  ^-iddles  which  perplexed  Eliphaz 
and  Zophar.  Natural  theology,  then,  is  not  a  progressive 
science."* 

Here,  in  the  space  of  two  not  very  long  paragraphs,  is 
a  multitude  of  allusions  which  evince  the  range  of  Lord 
Macaulay's  reading,  but  which  are  employed,  without  very 
close  thinking,  in  a  quite  inaccurate  way,  to  sustain  asser- 
tions that  are  not  true.  If  he  had  said  that  a  modern  phi- 
losopher has  before  him  in  the  structure  of  the  universe  not 
only  all  the  same  evidence  of  design  which  the  early  Greeks 
had,  but  a  great  deal  more,  he  would  have  hit  the  exact 
truth.  It  is  simple  extravagance  to  say  that  modern  astron- 
omy has  added  nothing  to  the  strength  of  the  argument 
which  shows  the  existence  of  a  supreme  lawgiver  and  artifi- 
cer of  infinite  power  and  skill.  What  did  the  early  Greeks 
know  about  the  structure  of  the  solar  system,  the  law  of 
universal  gravitation,  and  the  laws  of  motion  ?  Compare 
the  ideas  entertained  by  the  Greek  philosophers  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  universe  with  those  which  modern  astron- 
omy has  enabled  a  modern  philosopher  to  assume  as  sci- 
entific facts  established  by  rigorous  demonstration  ;  com- 
pare what  was  known  before  the  invention  of  the  telescope 
with  what  the  telescope  has  revealed ;  compare  the  prog- 
ress that  was  made  in  Greek  speculative  philosophy  from  the 
time  of  Thales  to  the  time  of  Plato,  and  then  say  whether 
natural  religion  had  not  made  advances  of  the  greatest  im- 
portance even  before  modern  science  had  multiplied  the 
means  for  still  greater  progress.  A  brief  summary  of  the 
Greek  philosophy  concerning  the  producing  causes  of  phe- 
nomena will  determine  whether  Lord  Macaulay  was  right 
or  wrong  in  the  assertion  that  the  "early  Greeks"  had  as 

*  Macaulay's  "  Essays,"  etc.,  Riverside  edition,  vol.  ii,  602-504. 


THALES.  27 

good  means  of  making  true  deductions  in  natural  theology 
as  the  means  which  exist  to-day. 

All  scholars  who  have  attended  to  the  history  of  Greek 
speculation  know  that  the  Greeks  held  to  the  belief  in  poly- 
theistic personal  agents  as  the  active  producers  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  Nature.  This  was  the  system  of  Homer  and 
Hesiod  and  the  other  old  poets.  This  was  the  popular  be- 
lief held  throughout  all  the  Hellenic  world,  and  it  contin- 
ued to  be  the  faith  of  the  general  public,  not  only  after  the 
different  schools  of  philosophy  had  arisen,  but  down  to  and 
after  the  time  when  St.  Paul  stood  on  Mars  Hill  and  told 
the  men  of  Athens  how  he  had  found  that  they  were  in  all 
things  too  superstitious.  Thales,  who  flourished  in  the 
first  half  of  the  sixth  century  before  Christ,  was  the  first 
Greek  who  suggested  a  physical  agency  in  place  of  a  per- 
sonal. He  assumed  the  material  substance,  water,  to  be 
the  primordial  matter  and  universal  substratum  of  every- 
thing in  Nature.  All  other  substances  were,  by  transmu- 
tations, generated  from  water,  and  when  destroyed  they  all 
returned  into  water.  His  idea  of  the  earth  was  that  it  was 
a  flat,  round  surface  floating  on  the  immense  watery  ex- 
panse or  ocean.  In  this  he  agreed  with  the  old  poets  ;  but 
he  did  not,  like  them,  suppose  that  the  earth  extended 
down  to  the  depths  of  Tartarus.  The  Thalesian  hypothe- 
sis, therefore,  rejected  the  Homeric  Okeanus,  the  father  of 
all  things,  and  substituted  for  that  personal  agency  the 
agency  of  one  primordial  physical  substance,  by  its  own 
energy  producing  all  other  substances.  This  is  about  all 
that  is  known  of  the  philosophy  of  Thales,  and  even  this  is 
not  known  from  any  extant  writing  of  his,  but  it  is  de- 
rived from  what  subsequent  writers,  including  Aristotle, 
have  imputed  to  him.*  Why  Lord  Macaulay  should  have 
selected  Thales  as  the  Greek  philosopher  who  was  as  favor- 

♦Grote's"  Plato,"  1,4. 


28  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

ably  situated  as  a  philosopher  of  the  present  day  for  dealing 
with  questions  of  natural  religion,  is  not  very  apparent.  All 
that  Thales  did,  assuming  that  we  know  what  he  did,  was 
to  strike  out  a  new  vein  of  thought,  the  direct  opposite  of 
the  poetical  and  popular  idea  of  the  origin  of  phenomena. 

From  Thales  to  Plato,  a  century  and  a  half  intervened.* 
During  this  period  there  arose,  according  to  Mr.  Grote, 
twelve  distinct  schemes  of  philosophy,  the  authors  of  which 
that  learned  Englishman  has  enumerated,  together  with  an 
admirable  summary  of  their  respective  systems.  From  this 
summary  certain  things  are  apparent.  All  these  philoso- 
phers, from  Thales  to  Democritus,  while  each  speculated 
upon  Nature  in  an  original  vein  of  his  own,  endeavored  to 
find  an  explanation  or  hypothesis  on  which  to  account  for 
the  production  and  generation  of  the  universe  by  some 
physical  agency  apart  from  the  mythical  personifications 
which  were  believed  in  by  the  populace  and  assumed  in  the 
poetical  theologies.  Some  of  them,  without  blending  ethics 
and  theology  in  their  speculations,  adopted,  as  the  univer- 
sal and  sufficient  agents,  the  common,  familiar,  and  pervad- 
ing material  substances,  such  as  water,  fire,  air,  etc. ;  others, 
as  Pythagoras  and  his  sect,  united  with  ethical  and  theo- 
logical speculations  the  idea  of  geometrical  and  arithmeti- 
cal combinations  as  the  primal  scientific  basis  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  Nature.  But  what  was  common  to  all  these 
speculations  was  the  attempt  to  find  a  scientific  basis  on 
which  to  explain,  by  physical  generation,  by  transmutation 
and  motion  from  place  to  place,  the  generation  of  the  Kos- 
mos,  to  take  the  place  of  generation  by  a  divine  personal 
agency  or  agencies.  But  while  these  speculations  were  of 
course  unsuccessful,  their  abundance  and  variety,  the  in- 
ventive genius  which  they  exhibit,  the  effort  to  find  a  scien- 
tific basis  apart  from  the  popular  and  poetic  belief  in  a 

*  Thales  flourished  620-560  b.  c.    Plato's  life  extended  from  427-34'?  b.  c. 


PLATO  AND   ARISTOTLE.  29 

multitude  of  personal  and  divine  agencies,  constitute,  as 
Mr.  Grote  has  well  said,  '^one  of  the  most  memorable  facts 
in  the  history  of  the  Hellenic  mind";  and  "the  mental 
effort  required  to  select  some  known  agency  and  to  connect 
it  by  a  chain  of  reasoning  with  the  result,  all  this  is  a  new 
phenomenon  in  the  history  of  the  human  mind."  Such  an 
amount  of  philosophical  speculations  could  not  go  on  for  a 
century  and  a  half  without  enlarging  the  meaus  for  deal- 
ing with  questions  of  natural  theology ;  for  they  very  nearly 
exhausted  the  "causings  and  beginnings"  which  could  be 
assigned  to  regular  knowable  and  predictable  agencies  ;  and 
these  they  carried  through  almost  every  conceivable  form  of 
action  by  which  such  agencies  could  be  supposed  to  operate. 
"While  the  authors  of  these  systems  of  philosophy  were  con- 
stantly hampered  by  the  popular  and  poetic  conceptions  of 
a  diversified  and  omnipresent  polytheistic  agency,  a  belief 
which,  as  Mr.  Grote  has  said,  was  "  eminently  captivating 
and  impressive,"  and  which  pervaded  all  the  literature  of 
their  time,  their  speculations  accumulated  a  vast  fund  of 
ideas  in  the  sphere  of  scientific  explanations,  which,  al- 
though unsatisfactory  to  modern  science,  became,  when  we 
reach  Plato,  the  principal  influence  which  led  him  to  revert 
to  the  former  idea  of  a  divine  agency,  intentionally  and  de- 
liberately constructing  out  of  a  chaotic  substratum  the  sys- 
tem of  the  Kosmos  ;  and  which  also  led  him  to  unite  with 
it  the  idea  of  a  mode  in  which  it  acted  on  and  through  the 
primordial  elements  of  matter. 

So  that,  from  the  class  of  philosophers  to  whom  Lord 
Macaulay  presumably  referred  as  "  the  early  Greeks,"  down 
to  and  including  Plato,  there  was  a  great  advance.  The 
earlier  Greek  philosophers  did  not  divide  substance  from  its 
powers  or  properties,  nor  did  they  conceive  of  substance  as 
a  thing  acted  upon  by  power,  or  of  power  as  a  thing  distinct 
from  substance.  They  regarded  substance,  some  primordial 
substance,  with  its  powers  and  properties,  as  an  efficient  and 


30  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

material  cause,  and  as  the  sole  cause,  as  a  positive  and  final 
agent.  They  did  not  seek  for  a  final  cause  apart  from  the 
substances  which  they  supposed  to  be  the  sole  agents  oper- 
ating to  produce  important  effects.  But,  inasmuch  as  they 
carried  their  various  theories  through  nearly  the  whole  range 
of  possible  speculation,  they  enabled  Plato  and  Aristotle  to 
see  that  there  was  a  fundamental  defect  in  their  reasoning  ; 
that  there  must  be  an  abstract  conception  of  power  as  some- 
thing distinct  from  substance  or  its  properties.  It  was  by 
Plato  and  Aristotle  that  this  abstract  conception  was  reached, 
of  course  without  any  influence  of  what  we  regard  as  reve- 
lation ;  and,  although  they  did  not  always  describe  correctly 
the  mode  in  which  this  power  had  acted,  their  perception 
of  the  logical  necessity  for  such  a  final  cause  marks  a  great 
progress  in  philosophical  speculation.  It  entirely  refutes 
Lord  Macaulay's  assertion  that  natural  theology  is  not  a 
progressive  science.  It  had  made  great  progress  from 
Thales  to  Plato ;  and  while  in  a  certain  sense  it  is  true 
that  "a  modern  philosopher  has  before  him  just  the  same 
evidence  of  design  in  the  structure  of  the  universe  which 
the  early  Greeks  had " — that  is,  he  has  the  same  physical 
phenomena  to  observe — it  is  not  true  that  the  early  Greeks 
did  not  develop  conceptions  of  the  origin  of  the  universe 
valuable  to  their  successors.  Lord  Macaulay  should  not 
have  compared  Thales  with  the  modern  philosopher,  in  re- 
spect of  advantage  of  situation,  but  he  should  have  com- 
pared the  modern  philosopher  with  Plato,  and  Plato  with 
his  predecessors ;  and  if  he  had  done  this,  he  could  not  have 
asserted  with  any  show  of  truth  that  natural  theology  has 
made  no  advance  as  a  science  from  the  time  of  Thales, 
the  Milesian  philosopher,  and  Simonides,  the  poet,  to  the 
present  day.  I  shall  have  occasion  hereafter  to  speak  of 
the  masterly  intellectual  power  by  which  Plato  wrought 
out  his  conception  of  a  formative  divine  agency  in  the  pro- 
duction of  the  Kosmos,  and  the  bold  and  original  specula- 


PTOLEMAIC  SYSTEM.  31 

tion  by  which  he  avoided  the  charge  of  infidelity  toward 
the  established  religion  of  his  countrymen. 

When  I  come  to  speak  of  what  modem  astronomy  has 
done  in  furnishing  us  with  new  means  of  sound  philo- 
sophical speculation  on  the  being,  attributes,  and  methods 
of  God,  it  will  be  seen  whether  Lord  Macaulay  is  correct 
in  the  assertion  that  it  has  added  nothing  to  the  argu- 
ment. At  present  I  will  briefly  advert  to  what  the  *' early 
Greeks,"  or  any  of  the  Greeks,  knew  of  the  structure  of 
the  solar  system.  We  learn,  from  a  work  which  dates  from 
nearly  the  middle  of  the  second  century  of  the  Christian 
era,  what  was  the  general  conception  of  the  solar  system 
among  the  ancients,  including  the  Greeks.  This  work  is 
known  as  the  "Almagest"  of  Ptolemy,  and  the  name  of 
the  "  Ptolemaic  System "  has  been  given  to  the  theory 
which  he  describes.  This  theory  was  common  to  all  the 
ancient  astronomers,  Ptolemy's  statement  of  it  being  a 
compendium  of  what  they  believed.  Its  principal  features 
are  these  :  1.  The  heavens  are  a  vast  sphere,  in  which  the 
heavenly  bodies  are  set,  and  around  the  pole  of  this  sphere 
they  revolve  in  a  circle  every  day.  2.  The  earth  is  like- 
wise a  sphere,  and  is  situated  in  the  center  of  the  celestial 
plane  as  a  fixed  point.  The  earth  having  no  motion,  and 
being  in  the  center  of  all  the  motions  of  the  other  bodies, 
the  diurnal  revolutions  of  those  bodies  are  in  a  uniform 
motion  around  it.  3.  The  sun,  being  one  of  the  heavenly 
bodies  making  a  revolution  around  the  earth,  was  supposed 
to  be  placed  outside  of  the  position  of  Venus  in  the  heav- 
enly sphere.  The  order  of  the  Ptolemaic  system  was  thus  : 
The  moon  was  first,  being  nearest  to  the  earth  ;  then  came 
Mercury  and  Venus,  t*he  sun  being  between  Venus  and 
Mars.  Beyond  Mars  came  Jnpiter  and  Saturn.  Plato's 
arrangement  was  in  one  respect  different,  his  order  being 
the  moon,  the  sun.  Mercury,  Venus,  Mars,  Jupiter,  and 
Saturn.     But  this  ideal  heavenly  sphere,  with  the  earth  in 


32  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION"? 

the  center  of  all  the  revolutions  of  the  other  bodies,  and 
remaining  quiescent — a  theory  which  was  common  to  all  the 
ancient  astronomers — was  the  result  of  obserying  the  mo- 
tions of  the  heavenly  bodies  as  they  appear  to  a  spectator 
on  the  earth.  Such  a  spectator  would  have  this  appear- 
ance of  a  celestial  sphere  presented  to  him  wherever  he 
might  be  ;  and,  judging  from  the  apparent  motions  of  the 
heavenly  bodies  relative  to  his  own  position  at  the  center, 
he  would  conclude  that  the  earth  is  at  that  center,  and  that 
it  remains  at  rest,  supported  on  nothing.  It  required  cer- 
tain discoveries  to  explode  this  system  of  a  celestial  sphere. 
First  came  Copernicus,  who,  about  the  middle  of  the  six- 
teenth century  of  our  era,  published  his  demonstrations, 
which  convinced  the  world  of  two  great  propositions :  1. 
That  the  diurnal  revolution  of  the  heavens  is  nothing  but 
an  apparent  motion,  caused  by  the  revolution  of  the  earth 
on  its  own  axis.  2.  That  the  earth  is  but  one  of  a  group 
of  planets,  all  of  which  revolve  around  the  sun  as  a  center. 
Next  came  Kepler,  who,  in  the  early  part  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  recognizing  the  truth  of  the  Copernican 
system,  determined  the  three  laws  of  planetary  motion  :  1. 
That  the  orbit  of  each  planet  is  an  ellipse,  the  sun  being  in 
one  focus.  2.  That  as  each  planet  moves  around  the  sun, 
the  line  which  joins  it  to  the  sun  passes  over  equal  areas  in 
equal  times.  3.  That  the  square  of  the  time  of  a  planet's 
revolution  around  the  sun  is  in  proportion  to  the  cube  of 
its  mean  distance  from  the  sun.  These  laws  were  discov- 
ered by  Kepler  as  deductions  made  upon  mathematical 
principles  from  observations  which  had  to  be  carried  on 
without  the  aid  of  the  telescope,  and  without  that  knowl- 
edge of  the  general  laws  of  motion  which  came  later.  Kep- 
ler's laws,  although  in  the  main  correct,  were  subsequently 
found  to  be  subject  to  certain  deviations  in  the  planetary 
motions.  It  was  when  Galileo,  the  contemporary  of  Kep- 
ler, who,  if  he  was  not  the  first  inventor  of  the  telescope. 


PYTHAGORAS.  33 

was  the  first  to  use  it  in  astronomical  observations,  was  able 
by  means  of  it  to  discover  the  general  laws  of  motion,  that 
the  substantial  accuracy  of  Kepler's  three  laws  could  be 
proved,  while  at  the  same  time  the  deviations  from  them 
were  accounted  for.  Still,  there  was  wanting  the  grand 
discovery,  which  would  disclose  the  cause  of  these  motions 
of  the  planets  in  elliptical  orbits,  and  the  relations  between 
their  distances  and  their  times  of  revolution,  and  thus  re- 
duce the  whole  of  the  phenomena  to  a  general  law.  Des- 
cartes, who  flourished  1596-1650,  first  attempted  to  do 
this  by  his  theory  of  Vortices.  He  supposed  the  sun  to  be 
immersed  in  a  vast  fluid,  which,  by  the  sun's  rotation,  was 
made  to  rotate  in  a  whirlpool,  that  carried  the  planets 
around  with  it,  the  outer  ones  revolving  more  slowly  be- 
cause the  parts  of  the  ethereal  fluid  in  which  they  were  im- 
mersed moved  more  slowly.  This  was  a  reversion  back  to 
some  of  the  ancient  speculations.  It  was  reserved  for 
Newton  to  discover  the  law  of  universal  gravitation,  by 
which,  in  the  place  of  any  physical  connection  between  the 
bodies  of  the  solar  system  by  any  intervening  medium,  the 
force  of  attraction  exerted  by  a  larger  body  upon  a  smaller 
would  draw  the  smaller  body  out  of  the  straight  line  that 
it  would  pursue  when  under  a  projectile  force,  and  would 
thus  convert  its  motion  into  a  circular  revolution  around 
the  attracting  body,  and  make  the  orbit  of  this  revolution 
elliptical  by  the  degree  in  which  the  attracting  force  varied 
in  intensity  according  to  the  varying  distance  between  the 
two  bodies.  When  Newton's  laws  of  motion  were  discov- 
ered and  found  to  be  true,  the  phenomena  of  the  solar 
system  were  explained. 

It  may  be  interesting,  before  leaving  for  the  present  this 
branch  of  the  subject,  to  advert  more  particularly  to  one  of 
the  philosophical  systems  of  the  Greeks,  which,  when  com- 
pared with  the  discoveries  of  modern  astronomy,  illustrates 
the  great  addition  that  has  been  made  to  our  means  of  sound 


34  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

speculation  upon  the  origin  of  the  material  universe.  I 
refer  to  the  system  of  the  Pythagoreans — one  of  the  most 
remarkable  instances  ©f  the  invention  of  facts  to  fit  and 
carry  out  a  theory  that  can  be  found  in  the  history  of  phi- 
losophy, although  we  are  not  without  striking  examples  of 
this  practice  in  modern  speculations.  It  has  already  been 
seen  that,  during  the  whole  period  of  Greek  philosophy 
before  the  time  of  Plato,  the  problem  was  to  find  a  primor- 
dial and  universal  agent  by  which  the  sensible  universe  was 
built  up  and  pr.oduced ;  supplying,  that  is  to  say,  the  mat- 
ter and  force  required  for  the  generation  of  successive 
products.*  It  has  been  seen  that  the  Thalesian  philoso- 
phers undertook  to  solve  this  problem  by  the  employ- 
ment of  some  primordial  physical  substance,  such  as  water, 
fire,  air,  etc.  Pythagoras  and  his  school  held  that  the  es- 
sence of  things  consisted  in  number ;  by  which  they  did 
not  mean  simply  that  all  things  could  be  numbered,  but 
they  meant  that  numbers  were  substance,  endowed  with  an 
active  force,  by  which  things  were  constituted  as  we  know 
them.  In  the  Pythagorean  doctrine  number  was  the  self- 
existing  reality  ;  not,  as  in  Plato's  system  of  ideas,  separate 
from  things,  but  as  the  essence  or  determining  principles 
of  things,  and  having,  moreover,  magnitude  and  active 
force,  f  This  remarkably  subtle  conception  of  an  agent  in 
the  production  of  material  things  evinces  the  effort  that 
was  making,  in  a  direction  opposite  to  that  of  Thales  and 
his  immediate  successors,  to  find  a  First  Cause.  It  was 
carried  out  by  the  Pythagoreans  in  the  movements  of  the 
heavenly  bodies,  in  the  works  of  human  art,  and  in  musical 
harmony ;  in  all  of  which  departments,  according  to  Mr. 
Grote,  they  considered  measure  and  number  as  the  produc- 
ing and  directing  agencies.     "We  are  here  concerned  only 

*  Grote's  "  Plato,"  i,  10.    I  follow  Mr.  Grote  in  describing  the  hypoth- 
esis of  the  Pythagoreans.  f  Ibid. 


THE  PYTHAGOREANS.  35 

with  their  application  of  this  theory  to  the  celestial  bodies. 
One  of  their  writers  is  quoted  by  Mr.  Grote  as  a  representa- 
tive of  the  school  which  was  founded  by  Pythagoras  (about 
630  B.  c),  and  which  extended  into  the  Graeco-Italian 
cities,  where,  as  a  brotherhood,  they  had  political  ascend- 
ency until  they  were  put  down  and  dispersed  about  509 
B.  c. ;  but  they  continued  for  several  generations  as  a  social, 
religious,  and  philosophical  sect.  According  to  this  writer 
(Philolaus),  "  the  Dekad,  the  full  and  perfect  number,  was 
of  supreme  and  universal  eflBcacy  as  the  guide  and  principle 
of  life,  both  to  the  Kosmos  and  to  man.  The  nature  of 
number  was  imperative  and  law-giving,  affording  the  only 
solution  of  all  that  was  perplexing  or  unknown ;  without 
number  all  would  be  indeterminate  and  unknowable." 

Accordingly,  the  Pythagoreans  constructed  their  sys- 
tem of  the  universe  by  the  all-pervading  and  producing 
energy  of  this  primordial  agent.  Number,  in  the  manner 
thus  described  by  Mr.  Grote  (i,  12-15)  :  "  The  Pythagore- 
ans conceived  the  Kosmos,  or  the  universe,  as  one  single 
system,  generated  out  of  numbers.  Of  this  system  the  cen- 
tral point — the  determining  or  limiting  One — was  first  in 
order  of  time  and  in  order  of  philosophical  conception.  By 
the  determining  influence  of  this  central  constituted  One, 
portions  of  the  surrounding  Infinite  were  successively  at- 
tracted and  brought  into  system :  numbers,  geometrical 
figures,  solid  substances  were  generated.  But,  as  the  Kos- 
mos thus  constituted  was  composed  of  numbers,  there  could 
be  no  continuum  ;  each  numeral  unit  was  distinct  and  sep- 
arate from  the  rest  by  a  portion  of  vacant  space,  which  was 
imbibed,  by  a  sort  of  inhalation,  from  the  infinite  space 
or  spirit  without.  The  central  point  was  fire,  called  by  the 
Pythagoreans  the  Hearth  of  the  Universe  (like  the  public 
hearth  or  perpetual  fire  maintained  in  the  prytaneum  of  a 
Grecian  city),  or  the  watch-tower  of  Zeus.  Around  it  re- 
volved, from  west  to  east,  ten  divine  bodies,  with  unequal 


36  CREATION  OR  E.VOLUTION? 

velocities,  but  in  symmetrical  movement  or  regular  dance. 
Outermost  was  the  circle  of  the  fixed  stars,  called  by  the 
Pythagoreans  Olympus,  and  composed  of  fire  like  the  center. 
Within  this  came  successively,  with  orbits  more  and  more 
approximating  to  the  center,  the  five  planets,  Saturn,  Jupi- 
ter, Mars,  Venus,  Mercury ;  next,  the  sun,  the  moon,  and 
the  earth.  Lastly,  between  the  earth  and  the  central  fire, 
an  hypothetical  body,  called  the  Antichthon,  or  counter- 
earth,  was  imagined  for  the  purpose  of  making  up  a  total 
represented  by  the  sacred  number  ten,  the  symbol  of  per- 
fection and  totality.  The  Antichthon  was  analogous  to  a 
separated  half  of  the  earth,  simultaneous  with  the  earth  in 
its  revolutions,  and  corresponding  with  it  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  central  fire.  The  inhabited  portion  of  the  earth 
was  supposed  to  be  that  which  was  turned  away  from  the 
central  fire  and  toward  the  sun,  from  which  it  received 
light.  But  the  sun  itself  was  not  self-himinous  :  it  was 
conceived  as  a  glassy  disk,  receiving  and  concentrating  light 
from  the  central  fire,  and  reflecting  it  upon  the  earth,  so 
long  as  the  two  were  on  the  same  side  of  the  central  fire. 
The  earth  revolved  in  an  orbit  obliquely  intersecting  that 
of  the  sun,  and  in  twenty-four  hours,  round  the  central  fire, 
always  turning  the  same  side  toward  that  fire.  The  alter- 
nation of  day  and  night  was  occasioned  by  the  earth  being, 
during  a  part  of  such  revolution,  on  the  same  side  of  the 
central  fire  with  the  sun,  and  thus  receiving  light  reflected 
from  him  ;  and  during  the  remaining  part  of  her  revolution 
on  the  side  opposite  to  him,  so  that  she  received  no  light  at 
all  from  him.  The  earth,  with  the  Antichthon,  made  this 
revolution  in  one  day ;  the  moon,  in  one  month  ;  the  sun, 
with  the  planets  Mercury  and  Venus,  in  one  year ;  the  plan- 
ets Mars,  Jupiter,  and  Saturn  in  longer  periods  respectively, 
according  to  their  distances  from  the  center;  lastly,  the 
outermost  circle  of  the  fixed  stars  (the  Olympus,  or  the 
Asslanes),  in  some  unknown  period  of  very  long  duration. 


THE  EARLY  GREEKS.  37 

'*  The  revolutions  of  such  grand  bodies  could  not  take 
place,  in  the  opinion  of  the  Pythagoreans,  without  produc- 
ing a  loud  and  powerful  sound  ;  and  as  their  distances  from 
the  central  fire  were  supposed  to  be  arranged  in  musical 
ratios,  so  the  result  of  all  these  separate  sounds  was  full  and 
perfect  harmony.  To  the  objection.  Why  were  not  the 
sounds  heard  by  us  ?  they  replied  that  we  had  heard  them 
constantly  and  without  intermission  from  the  hour  of  our 
birth  ;  hence  they  had  become  imperceptible  by  habit." 

Beautiful  as  was  this  theory — the  origin  of  the  phrase, 
*'  the  music  of  the  spheres " — it  owed  its  perfection  as  a 
theory  to  a  pure  invention,  resorted  to  in  order  to  carry  out 
the  hypothesis  of  the  sacred  number  Ten,  of  which  all  the 
greater  numbers  were  only  compounds  and  derivatives.  This 
perfect  and  normal  Ten,  as  a  basis  on  which  to  rest  a  bold 
astronomical  hypothesis,  required  the  imagination  of  the 
Antichthon,  or  counter-earth,  in  order,  with  the  other  bod- 
ies, to  make  up  the  primordial  number  to  whose  generative 
force  the  whole  of  these  bodies  owed  their  origin.  The  re- 
sort to  this  conception  of  number,  as  a  formative  and  active 
agent,  was  doubtless  due  to  the  fact  that  the  Pythagoreans 
were  the  earliest  cultivators  of  mathematical  science.  We 
are  told,  in  fact,  that  they  paved  the  way  for  Euclid  and 
Archimedes,  notwithstanding  their  symbolical  and  mystical 
fancies,  and  from  their  mathematical  studies  they  were  led 
to  give  exclusive  supremacy  to  arithmetical  and  geometrical 
views  of  Kature.  But  what  is  curious  about  this  whole 
speculation  is,  that  in  the  invention  or  substitution  of  cer- 
tain facts  in  order  to  make  a  perfect  theory,  it  resembles 
some  modem  hypotheses,  in  which  facts  have  been  assumed, 
or  argued  as  existing  from  analogies,  when  there  is  no  evi- 
dence which  establishes  them.  Modern  instances  of  this 
will  appear  hereafter. 

Enough  has  now  been  said  about  the  speculations  of  the 
"early  Greeks  "  to  show  the  extravagance  of  Lord  Macau- 


38  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

lay's  assertion  that  the  discoveries  of  modern  astronomy 
have  placed  the  modern  philosopher  in  no  better  situation 
to  make  safe  deductions  in  natural  theology  than  that  oc- 
cupied by  the  Hellenic  philosophers  from  Thales  to  Plato. 
The  evidences  of  design  in  the  formation  of  the  solar  system 
— of  that  kind  of  design  which  acts  in  direct  and  specific 
exertions  of  a  formative  will — have  been  enormously  multi- 
plied by  the  discoveries  of  modern  astronomy.  Those  dis- 
coveries, instead  of  leaving  us  to  grope  among  theories 
which  require  the  invention  or  imagination  of  facts,  relate 
to  facts  that  are  demonstrated ;  and  they  tend  in  the 
strongest  manner  to  establish  the  hypothesis  of  an  infinite 
Creator,  making  laws  to  govern  material  objects,  and  then 
creating  a  system  of  objects  to  be  governed  by  those  laws. 
In  a  future  chapter  I  shall  endeavor  to  show  why  this  hy- 
pothesis in  regard  to  the  solar  system  is  most  conformable 
to  the  rules  of  rational  belief. 

Not  to  anticipate  what  will  be  said  hereafter  concerning 
the  modern  discoveries  in  anatomy  and  in  comparative 
zoology,  it  is  enough  to  say  here  that  in  the  writings  of  the 
Greek  philosophers,  especially  of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  we 
may  discover  what  the  Greeks  knew  or  did  not  know,  and 
may  therefore  compare  their  knowledge  with  what  is  now 
known.  What  was  known  about  the  human  anatomy  to 
the  Greeks  of  Plato's  time  is  probably  pretty  well  reflected 
in  his  *^Timseus,"  the  celebrated  dissertation  in  which  he 
developed  his  theory  of  the  Kosmos  ;  for,  although  Plato  in 
that  superb  philosophical  epic  made  use  of  the  organs  of 
the  human  body  for  ethical  and  theological  purposes,  and 
did  not  make  a  special  study  of  matters  of  fact,  it  is  not 
probable  that  in  his  mode  of  using  them  he  so  far  departed 
from  the  received  ideas  of  his  time  respecting  the  human 
anatomy  that  his  treatise  would  have  been  regarded  by  his 
contemporaries  as  an  absurdity.  Indeed,  Mr.  Grote  con- 
sidered that  Plato  had  that  anatomical  knowledge  which 


PLATO  AND  GALEN.  39 

an  accomplished  man  of  his  time  could  hardly  fail  to  ac- 
quire without  special  study.*  Moreover,  even  Galen,  who 
came  five  centuries  after  Plato,  and  whose  anatomical  knowl- 
edge was  far  greater  than  could  have  been  commanded  in 
Plato's  day,  was  wholly  wrong  in  respect  to  the  functions 
of  some  of  the  human  organs.  He  agreed  with-  Plato's 
ethical  view  of  the  human  organism,  but  not  in  his  physio- 
logical postulates.  He  considered,  according  to  Mr.  Grote, 
that  Plato  had  demonstrated  the  hypothesis  of  one  soul  to 
be  absurd  ;  he  accepted  Plato's  triplicity  of  souls,  but  he 
located  them  differently.  He  held  that  there  are  three 
*'  originating  and  governing  organs  in  the  body  :  the  brain, 
which  is  the  origin  of  all  the  nerves,  both  of  sensation  and 
motion  ;  the  heart,  the  origin  of  the  arteries  ;  the  liver,  the 
sanguifacient  organ,  and  the  origin  of  the  veins  which  dis- 
tribute nourishment  to  all  parts  of  the  body.  These  three 
are  respectively  the  organs  of  the  rational,  the  energetic, 
and  the  appetitive  soul."  f  Plato,  on  the  other  hand,  had 
^  placed  the  rational  soul  in  the  cranium,  the  energetic  soul 
in  the  thoracic  cavity,  and  the  appetitive  soul  in  the  ab- 
dominal cavity  ;  he  connected  them  by  the  line  of  the  spi- 
nal marrow  continuous  with  the  brain,  making  the  rational 
soul  immortal,  and  the  two  inferior  souls,  or  two  divisions 
of  one  inferior  soul,  mortal.  Galen  did  not  decide  what  is 
the  essence  of  the  three  souls,  or  whether  they  are  immor- 
tal. Plato  assigned  to  the  liver  a  very  curious  function,  or 
compound  of  functions,  making  it  the  assistant  of  the  ra- 
tional soul  in  maintaining  its  ascendency  over  the  appeti- 
tive soul,  and  at  the  same  time  making  it  the  seat  of  those 
prophetic  warnings  which  the  gods  would  sometimes  vouch- 
safe to  the  appetitive  soul,  especially  when  the  functions  of 
the  rational  soul  are  suspended,  as  in  sleep,  disease,  or  ec- 
stasy. 

*  Grote,  iii,  290.  f  Ibid.,  287,  288. 


40  OKEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

But  while  there  was  much  scientific  progress  from  Plato 
to  Galen,  and  while  Galen's  physiological  ideas  of  the  func- 
tions of  the  brain,  the  heart,  and  the  liver  held  their  place 
until  Harvey's  discovery  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  that  discovery  and  the  subsequent 
investigations  proved  that  Galen,  although  not  far  wrong  as 
to  the  brain,  was  wholly  wrong  as  to  the  liver,  and  partially 
wrong  as  to  the  heart.  Yet  Galen's  physiological  theories 
concerning  these  organs  were  founded  on  many  anatomical 
facts  and  results  of  experiments,  such  as  could  then  be 
made. 

There  is  another  fact  which  marks  the  state  of  anatomi- 
cal knowledge  among  the  Greeks  in  the  time  of  Plato,  and 
of  Aristotle,  who  belonged  to  the  same  century.  The 
"Timaeus"  of  Plato  shows  that  there  were  physicians  at 
that  period,  and  that  he  was  acquainted  with  the  writings 
of  Hippocrates.  The  important  fact  is,  as  stated  by  Mr. 
Grote,  that  *^the  study  and  practice  of  medicine  was  at 
that  time  greatly  affected  by  the  current  speculations  re- 
specting Nature  as  a  whole  ;  accomplished  physicians  com- ' 
bined  both  lines  of , study,  implicating  cosmical  and  biologi- 
cal theories."  * 

It  is  now  only  needful  to  say  that  modern  anatomy  and 
physiology  afford  aids  to  sound  deductions  in  natural  the- 
ology in  reference  to  the  structure  of  the  human  body  as  an 
animal  organism,  and  all  the  functions  of  its  different  or- 
gans, which  immeasurably  transcend  all  that  was  known  or 
assumed  among  the  early  Greeks,  or  in  the  time  of  Plato 
and  Aristotle,  or  in  the  time  of  Galen.  Notwithstanding 
the  dispute  whether  the  origin  of  man  as  an  animal  is  to  be 
referred  to  a  special  act  of  creation,  or  to  the  process  of 
what  has  been  called  evolution,  there  can  be  no  controversy 
on  one  point,  namely,  that  modern  anatomy  and  physiology 

*  Grote,  iii,  289. 


WHAT  IS  PROOF  OF  IMMORTALITY?  41 

have  vastly  increased  our  knowledge  of  the  structure  of  the 
human  frame,  and  the  means  of  rational  speculation  upon 
the  nature  of  intellect,  as  compared  with  any  means  that 
were  possessed  by  the  most  accomplished  and  learned  of  the 
Greeks  of  antiquity.  It  matters  little  on  which  side  of  the 
controversy,  between  creation  and  evolution,  the  great  anat- 
omists of  the  present  day  range  themselves.  It  is  upon 
the  facts  which  their  investigations  have  revealed  that  we 
have  to  judge  of  the  probable  truth  of  the  one  hypothesis 
or  the  other.  The  probable  destiny  of  man  as  an  immortal 
being  is  an  inquiry  that  has  certainly  lost  nothing  by  our 
increased  knowledge  of  the  facts  in  his  animal  structure 
which  tend  to  support  the.  hypothesis  of  design  in  his  cre- 
ation. 

Lord  Macaulay  attributes  an  utter  failure  to  the  efforts 
of  the  philosophers,  from  Plato  to  Franklin,  to  "prove" 
the  immortality  of  the  soul  without  the  help  of  revelation. 
What  did  he  mean  by  proof  ?  Kevelation  is,  of  course,  the 
only  direct  proof.  It  is  so,  because  it  is  direct  testimony 
of  a  fact,  proceeding  from  the  only  source  that  can  have 
direct  and  certain  knowledge  of  that  fact.  When  the  evi- 
dences which  are  supposed  to  establish  the  existence  and 
authority  of  the  witness  have  become  satisfactory  to  us,  we 
are  possessed  of  proof  of  our  immortality,  and  this  proof  is 
the  only  direct  evidence  of  which  the  fact  admits,  and  it 
constitutes  all  that  should  be  spoken  of  as  proof.  But  there 
is  collateral  although  inferior  evidence — inferior,  because  it 
consists  in  facts  which  show  a  high  degree  of  probability 
that  the  soul  of  man  is  immortal,  although  this  kind  of 
evidence  is  not  like  the  direct  testimony  of  a  competent 
witness.  Is  all  this  presumptive  evidence,  with  its  weighty 
tendency  to  establish  the  probable  truth  of  immortality,  to 
be  pronounced  of  no  value,  because  it  belongs  to  a  different 
order  of  proof  from  that  derived  from  the  assertion  of  a 
competent  witness  to  the  fact  ?    It  is  one  of  the  advantages 


42  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

of  our  situation  in  this  life,  that  the  collateral  evidence 
which  tends  to  show  the  high  probability  of  a  future  state 
of  existence  is  not  withheld  from  us.  As  a  supplemental 
aid  to  the  direct  teaching  of  revelation,  it  is  of  inestimable 
importance  if  we  do  not  obscure  it  by  theories  which  per- 
vert its  force,  and  if  we  reason  upon  it  on  sound  philo- 
sophical principles.  What  we  have  to  do  in  estimating  the 
probable  truth  of  our  immortality,  as  shown  by  the  science 
of  natural  religion,  is  to  give  the  same  force  to  moral  evi- 
dence in  this  particular  department  of  belief,  that  we  give 
to  the  moral  evidence  which  convinces  us  of  many  things 
of  which  we  have  no  direct  proof,  or  of  which  the  direct 
proof  lies  in  evidence  of  another  kind. 

"He  knew  as  much  about  it,"  said  Voltaire,  "as  has 
been  known  in  all  ages — that  is  to  say,  very  little  indeed." 
This,  like  many  of  the  witticisms  of  Voltaire,  pressed  into 
the  service  of  an  argument  against  the  value  of  natural  re- 
ligion at  the  present  day  when  studied  by  mature  and  dis- 
ciplined minds,  is  quite  out  of  place.  What  human  reason 
has  done  in  the  course  of  three  thousand  years  is  not  to  be 
put  on  a  par  with  the  speculations  of  intelligent  children 
or  half-civilized  men ;  and  although  some  of  the  riddles 
which  perplexed  Eliphaz  and  Zophar  have  not  had  a  per- 
fectly satisfactory  solution,  it  is  quite  wide  from  the  truth 
to  assert  that  there  has  been  no  approximation  to  a  satis- 
factory solution,  or  that  some  of  the  riddles  have  not  ceased 
to  be  the  riddles  which  they  were  three  thousand  years  ago. 
In  that  period  there  has  been  an  accumulation  of  evidence 
concerning  the  phenomena  of  Nature,  and  the  phenomena 
of  mind,  vast  beyond  comparison  when  placed  in  contrast 
with  what  was  known  in  the  tents  of  the  Idumean  emirs, 
and  the  importance  of  this  accumulation  of  evidence  is 
proved  by  the  fact  that  theories  have  been  built  upon  it 
which  undertake  to  explain  it  by  hypotheses  that  were 
never  heard  of  before,  and  which  may  possibly  leave  the 


DARWIN  AND  SPENCER.  43 

"riddles"  in  a  far  less  satisfactory  state  than  they  were  in 
the  time  of  Job.  On  the  other  hand,  while  the  companions 
of  Job  may  have  been  unable  to  suggest  to  him  any  solution 
of  the  problems  of  life,  it  does  not  at  all  follow  tliat  we  are 
as  helpless  as  they  were,  even  if  we  avail  ourselves  of  noth- 
ing but  what  the  science  of  natural  theology  can  now  teach 
us.* 

It  will  be  seen  that  I  attach  great  importance  to  natural 
theology.  But  I  do  not  propose  to  write  for  the  confirmed 
believers  in  revelation,  on  the  one  hand,  who  have  become 
convinced  by  the  evidence  which  supports  revelation  ;  or  for 
those,  on  the  other  hand,  who  believe  nothing,  and  who 
have  become  confirmed  in  habits  of  thinking  which  unfit 
them  for  judging  of  the  weight  of  evidence  on  such  sub- 
jects as  the  existence  of  God  and  the  creation  of  man.  I 
write  for  that  great  mass  of  people  of  average  intelligence, 
who  do  not  understand  accurately  what  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  is  as  expounded  by  its  leading  representatives, 
and  who  do  not  know  to  what  it  leads.  It  will  be  found 
that  in  some  respects  there  is  a  distinction  between  the 
school  of  which  Darwin  is  the  representative  and  the  school 
which  follows  Spencer,''  To  point  out  this  distinction,  and 
yet  to  show  that  both  systems  result  in  negatives  which  put 
an  end  to  the  idea  of  immortality,  and  that  the  weight^of 
evidence  is  against  both  of  them,  is  what  I  propose  to  do,/ 

*  It  should  be  stated  that  the  passage  from  Macaulay's  writings  here 
commented  on  was  written  and  first  published  in  1840,  before  the  specu- 
lations of  the  scientists  who  maintain  the  doctrines  of  evolution  had 
attracted  much  attention,  or  been  promulgated  in  their  present  shape. 


CHAPTER  11. 

The  Platonic  Kosmos  compared  with  the  Darwinian  theory  of  evolution. 

It  is  my  purpose  in  this  chapter  to  draw  a  parallel  be- 
tween the  theory  of  the  origin  of  different  animals  pro- 
pounded in  the  "Timaeus"  of  Plato  and  that  of  Mr.  Darwin. 
The  analogy  between  them  has  been  briefly  hinted  by  Mr. 
Grote,  but  he  has  not  followed  it  out  in  detail,  as  it  was  no 
part  of  his  object  to  make  minute  comparisons  between  any 
of  the  speculations  of  Plato  and  those  of  modern  philoso- 
phers. The  great  English  scholar  and  critic  seems  to  re- 
gard it  as  somewhat  uncertain  how  far  Plato  meant  in  the 
"Timseus"  to  have  his  description  of  the  Kosmos  stand  as  an 
expression  of  his  own  belief,  or  as  a  mere  work  of  his  imagi- 
nation and  fancy.  Plato,  we  are  told,  and  this  is  quite  ob- 
yious,  dealt  but  little  with  facts,  while  he  dealt  largely  with 
theories.  But,  even  as  a  pure  work  of  the  imagination,  or 
as  a  philosophical  epic,  the  daring  conception  of  the  Kosmos 
is  wonderfully  complete ;  and  it  will  repay  any  one,  who 
follows  Mr.  Grote  in  his  analysis  of  it,  to  observe  how  Plato 
employs  a  process  of  degeneration  to  account  for  the  forma- 
tion of  different  species  of  animals,  from  the  higher  to  the 
lower,  by  agencies  that  bear  a  strong  resemblance  to  those 
which  are  assumed  by  Darwin  to  have  worked  in  the  oppo- 
site process  of  variation  and  natural  selection,  resulting  in 
the  evolution  of  a  higher  from  a  lower  animal.  But,  in 
order  to  render  this  comparison  intelligible,  it  is  necessary 
to  make  an  abstract  of  Plato's  system  of  the  Kosmos  before 
adverting  to  the  analogies  between  that  system  and  the 


PLATO'S  DEMIURGUS.  45 

Darwinian  theory.     I  follow,  although  I  have  greatly  con- 
densed, Mr.  Grote's  description  of  the  Platonic  Kosmos. 

According  to  the  Platonic  idea  of  the  Kosmos,  as  given 
in  the  "Timaeus,"  there  existed,  anterior  to  all  time,  primor- 
dial matter  in  a  state  of  chaos.  This  matter  was  not  cre- 
ated ;  for,  according  to  Mr.  Grote,  whose  authority  upon 
such  a  point  is  the  highest,  the  notion  of  absolute  creation 
was  unknown  to  the  Greeks  of  antiquity,  and  it  does  not 
appear  that  Plato  suggests  it.  But,  without  accounting  for 
its  existence,  Plato  assumes  that  there  was  matter  in  a  con- 
dition of  utter  chaos  before  time  could  have  had  an  exist- 
ence ;  and,  in  order  to  make  the  chaotic  condition  the  more 
impressive  in  its  primitive  destitution  of  all  form  or  active 
principles  tending  to  union  or  arrangement,  he  supposes 
that  the  four  elements  of  fire,  air,  earth,  and  water  had  no 
existence  save  in  the  abstract,  or  as  ideas  and  forms.  But, 
as  abstract  ideas,  these  four  elements  of  fire,  air,  earth,  aad 
water  were  distinct,  self-existing,  and  indestructible,  coeval 
with  the  chaotic  matter  which  was  waiting  to  receive  their 
impress  and  to  take  on  their  distinctive  elemental  charac- 
ters. They  had  already  begun  to  act  on  the  fundamentum, 
or  primordial  chaotic  matter,  as  upon  a  recipient,  but  it 
was  in  a  confused  way  and  without  regularity  of  plan,  so 
that  they  had  not  become  concrete  existences  or  determi- 
nate agents. 

In  this  state  of  things  there  appears  upon  the  scene  the 
Demiurgus,  a  being  coeval  with  the  chaos  of  matter,  that  is, 
self-existing  and  eternal.  But,  consistently  with  the  phi- 
losophy which  did  not  admit  of  the  idea  of  absolute  crea- 
tion, the  Demiurgus  was  not  a  creator,  but  an  architect  or 
designer,  working  on  materials  that  lay  within  his  reach. 
His  moral  attribute  was  goodness,  which  was,  in  his  situ- 
ation, synonymous  with  order,  regularity,  symmetry,  and 
proportion,  and,  along  with  this  tendency,  he  had  supreme 
artistic  skill.    In  other  words,  he  was  the  personification  of 


46  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

V0V5,  or  reason,  working  against  necessity  :  the  latter  being, 
not  what  we  mean  by  that  term,  something  preordained 
and  fixed,  but  confusion,  uncertainty,  irregularity,  and  un- 
reason, which  are  to  be  overcome  by  their  opposites. 

Besides  the  chaotic  matter  and  the  ideas  or  forms  of  the 
four  elements,  as  yet  unrealized  in  the  actual  substances  of 
fire,  air,  earth,  and  water,  there  were  coeval  ideas  or  forms 
of  animals,  or,  as  we  should  say,  abstract  animals,  or  con- 
ceptions of  animals.  The  first  and  grandest  of  these  was 
the  eternal  self -animal,  or  the  ideal  of  animal  existence. 
Next  came  the  ideas  or  forms  of  four  other  animals  :  1.  The 
celestial  gods  ;  2.  Man  ;  3.  Birds,  or  animals  living  in  air ; 
4.  Land  or  water  animals.  Bearing  in  mind  that  we  are 
still  in  the  region  of  abstract  conceptions  in  regard  to  these 
types  of  animals,  which  as  yet  have  no  concrete  existence, 
and  that  they  are,  so  to  speak,  the  intellectual  models  from 
which  the  Demiurgus  is  to  work,  in  order  to  make  the  real 
animals  conformably  to  the  pre-existing  and  eternal  plan, 
we  come  to  the  process  of  forming  the  Kosmos,  which  is  to 
be  the  containing  animal  of  all  the  other  four.  Out  of  the 
confused  chaos  of  existing  matter  the  Demiurgns  proceeds 
to  construct  the  Kosmos,  which  was  to  become  the  one  self- 
animal,  by  impressing  the  idea  or  abstract  form  of  animal 
upon  a  physical  structure  built  out  of  the  primordial  cha- 
otic matter  and  comprehending  the  whole  of  it.  The  first 
step  was  to  bring  the  four  elements  of  fire,  air,  earth,  and 
water  out  of  their  chaotic  and  confused  condition  by  sepa- 
rating them  according  to  the  forms  of  their  eternal  ideas. 
The  total  of  each  element,  when  made  to  take  its  normal 
form,  was  used  in  the  construction  of  the  Kosmos,  which 
thus  came  to  possess  the  whole  existing  body  of  material ; 
**so  that,"  to  borrow  the  words  of  Mr.  Grote,  "there  re- 
mained nothing  of  the  four  elements  apart,  to  hurt  the 
Kosmos  from  without,  nor  anything  as  raw  material  for  a 
second  Kosmos." 


SOUL  OF  THE  KOSMOS.  47 

The  Kosmos  was  made  a  perfect  sphere,  and  with  a  per- 
fectly smooth  outer  surface,  without  organs  of  sight  or 
hearing,  because  there  was  nothing  outside  to  be  seen  or 
heard  ;  without  organs  of  respiration,  because  there  was  no 
outside  atmosphere  to  be  breathed ;  and  without  nutritive 
or  excrementory  organs,  because  it  was  self-sufficing,  being 
supplied  with  nourishment  by  its  own  decay.  It  was  not 
furnished  with  limbs  or  means  of  locomotion  or  standing, 
because,  being  a  sphere  turning  on  an  axis,  and  having  only 
one  of  the  seven  possible  varieties  of  movement,  namely, 
rotation  in  a  circle  in  one  and  the  same  plane,  there  was 
nothing  for  it  to  grasp  or  repel.*  This  body,  the  only-be- 
gotten, because  in  its  formation  all  existing  bodily  material 
was  employed,  perfectly  spherical  and  smooth,  equidistant 
from  its  center  to  all  points  of  its  circumference,  and  sus- 
pended upon  its  own  axis  traversing  its  diameter,  was  now 
to  be  animated  by  a  soul. 

The  Demiurgus,  in  the  formation  of  the  soul  of  the 
Kosmos,  took  three  constituent  ingredients  and  mixed 
them  together.  They  were  :  1.  The  Same,  or  the  Identical, 
the  indivisible  and  unchangeable  essence  of  Ideas  ;  2.  The 
Different,  or  the  Plural,  the  divisible  essence  of  bodies  or  of 
the  elements  ;  3.  A  compound  of  both  of  these  ingredients 
melted  into  one.  Blended  together  in  one  grand  compound, 
these  three  ingredients  formed  the  soul  of  the  Kosmos  by 
first  dividing  the  mixture  into  different  portions,  and  then 
uniting  the  portions  according  to  a  complicated  scale  of 
harmonious  numerical  proportions.  The  outer  or  sidereal 
sphere  of  the  Kosmos  was  made  to  receive  the  Same,  or 
Identity,  by  being  placed  in  an  even  and  undivided  rota- 
tion toward  the  right,  turning  on  the  great  axis  of  the 
whole  sphere.     The  interior,  or  planetary  spheres,  the  five 

*  Rotation  was  considered  the  movement  most  conformable  to  reason 
and  intelligence,  and  it  is  impracticable  to  any  figure  but  the  spherical. 
Grote,  iii,  253. 


48  ceeatio:n"  or  evolution? 

planets,  and  the  sun  and  the  moon,  were  made  to  be 
under  the  influence  of  the  Different,  or  Diversity — that  is 
to  say,  their  rotations  on  their  separate  axes,  all  oblique, 
were  toward  the  left,  while  the  overpowering  force  of 
rotation  of  the  outer  sphere  carried  them  along  with  it, 
although  the  time  of  their  separate  rotations  was  more  or 
less  modified  by  their  own  inherent  and  countermoving 
forces. 

Thus  the  sentient  capacity  of  the  cosmical  soul  became 
the  cognition  of  the  Same  and  the  Different,  and  the  blended 
Same  and  Different,  because  it  embodied  these  three  in- 
gredients in  its  own  nature.  It  was  invisible ;  rooted  at 
its  center  and  pervading  and  inclosing  the  whole  visible 
body,  circulating  and  communicating,  without  voice  or 
sound,  aU  impressions  and  information  concerning  the 
existing  relations  between  the  separate  parts  and  specialties 
of  the  cosmical  body. 

Anterior  to  the  Kosmos  there  was  no  time.  With  the 
rotation  of  the  Kosmos  time  began.  It  was  marked  first 
by  the  eternal  and  unchanging  rotation  of  the  outer  circle, 
in  which  were  placed  the  fixed  stars,  which  revolved  with 
it  in  unaltered  position  with  regard  to  each  other  ;  and  one 
revolution  of  this  outer  or  most  rational  circle  made  a  day. 
The  sun,  moon,  and  planets  were  distributed  in  different 
portions  of  the  Circle  of  the  Different ;  one  revolution  of 
the  moon  marking  a  month,  and  one  revolution  of  the  sun 
marking  a  year.  The  earth,  the  first  and  oldest  of  the 
sidereal  and  planetary  gods,  was  packed  around  the  great 
axis  which  ran  through  the  center  of  the  Kosmos,  and 
turned  that  axis;  so  that  the  earth  regulated  the  move- 
ment of  the  great  cosmical  axis,  and  was  the  determining 
agent  of  night  and  day. 

Thus  far  we  have  the  formation  of  the  Kosmos,  animated 
with  a  pervading  soul,  the  body  being  formed  out  of  the 
whole  of  existing  matter,  molded  into  the  specific  elements 


THE  PRIMITIVE  GODS.  49 

of  fire,  air,  earth,  and  water,  and  the  soul  being  formed  out 
of  the  constituent  ingredients  furnished  by  the  eternal  and 
invisible  essence  of  ideas.  The  whole,  body  and  soul  of  the 
Kosnios,  was  thus  an  animal,  formed  on  the  abstract  but 
eternal  idea  or  form  of  an  animal  which  had  existed  before 
time  began.  We  now  approach  the  formation  of  the  other 
animals.  Of  the  Kosmos  there  could  be  but  one.  All  ex- 
isting material  of  matter  had  been  used  in  his  construction. 
He  could  not  become  a  species,  as  there  could  be  no  second 
Kosmos.  Something  could  be  borrowed  from  him,  for  the 
formation  of  other  animals,  but  nothing  could  be  destroyed. 
He  was  not  yet,  however,  a  full  copy  of  the  model  of  the 
Generic  Animal  or  Idea  of  Animal,  because  the  eternal 
plan  of  that  model  required  that  he  should  be  peopled  or 
inhabited  by  four  other  animals,  which  might  constitute 
species.  Accordingly,  the  Demiurgus  proceeds  to  form  the 
first  of  these  sub-animals,  the  gods,  who  are  to  inhabit 
different  portions  of  the  Kosmos.  The  first  of  these  in 
formation  was  the  earth,  planted  in  the  center,  and  made 
sentinel  over  night  and  day ;  next  the  fixed  stars,  formed 
chiefly  out  of  fire,  and  placed  in  the  outer  circle  of  a  fixed 
revolution,  or  the  Circle  of  the  Same,  to  give  to  it  light 
and  brilliancy.  The  sidereal  orbs  thus  became  animated 
beings,  eternal  and  divine.  They  remained  constantly 
turning  round  in  the  same  relative  position,  but  the  sun, 
moon,  and  planets,  belonging  to  the  Circle  of  the  Different, 
and  trying  to  revolve  by  their  own  effort  in  a  direction 
opposite  to  that  of  the  outer  sphere,  became  irregular  in 
their  revolutions  and  varied  in  their  relative  positions. 
Thus  the  primitive  gods  were  the  earth  and  the  fixed  stars, 
which  revolved  without  variation  with  the  Circle  of  the 
Same,  and  became  immortal  as  well  as  visible ;  while  the 
sun,  moon,  and  planets  were  not  among  the  primitive 
gods,  but  were  simply  spherical  bodies  placed  in  the  inner 
Circle  of  the  Different.     The  primitive  gods  preside  over 


50  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

and  regulate  the  Kosmos.     From  them  are  generated  and 
descended  the  remaining  gods.* 

Haying  completed  the  Kosmos  and  the  primitive  gods, 
the  Demiurgiis  paused  in  his  work.  There  were  still  other 
animals  to  be  constructed,  the  first  and  noblest  of  which 
was  to  be  Man.  But  the  Demiurgus,  who,  in  the  con- 
struction of  these  gods,  had  made  them  immortal,  not  in 

*  The  primitive  gods  of  Plato's  conception  (in  the  "  Timseus  ")  are  not 
to  be  confounded  with  the  gods  of  the  poetic  and  popular  faith.  As  Mr. 
Grote  has  pointed  out,  there  is  nothing  more  remarkable  in  Plato's  writings 
than  the  subtilty  and  skill  with  which  he  contrived  to  elude  the  charge  of 
impiety  and  infidelity  toward  the  gods  of  tradition  and  of  the  popular 
faith.  In  a  passage  of  the  "  Timaeus,"  on  which  Mr.  Grote  seems  to  be  in 
doubt  whether  it  was  ironical  or  sincere,  Plato  boldly  confronts  the  diffi- 
culty by  saying  that  we  must  believe  competent  witnesses  whose  testimony 
we  have,  respecting  the  genesis  of  the  remaining  gods  who  have  personal 
names  and  were  believed  in  by  his  contemporaries.  For  his  own  part,  he 
says,  he  does  not  pretend  to  account  for  their  generation.  The  sons  of  the 
gods,  the  heroic  and  sacred  families,  who  must  have  known  their  own 
fathers  and  all  about  their  own  family  affairs,  have  given  us  their  family 
traditions,  and  we  must  obey  the  law  and  believe.  But  concerning  the 
primitive  gods,  the  fifst  progenitors  of  the  remaining  gods,  we  are  at 
liberty  to  speculate.  The  ingenuity  of  this  admission  of  authority  where 
authority  has  spoken,  reconcilable  with  speculation  upon  matters  on  which 
authority  has  not  spoken,  is  admirable.  Plato,  as  Mr.  Grote  has  observed, 
was  willing  to  incur  the  risk  of  one  count  of  the  indictment  which  was 
brought  against  his  master  Socrates,  that  of  introducing  new  divine  per- 
sons. In  legal  parlance  he  might  have  demurred  to  this  count,  as  not 
charging  any  offense  against  the  established  religion.  But  the  other  count, 
for  not  acknowledging  the  gods  whom  the  city  acknowledged,  he  did  not 
choose  to  encounter.  As  to  them,  he  prudently,  and  perhaps  sarcastically, 
accepts  the  testimony  of  witnesses  who  speak  by  inspiration  and  authority. 
But  as  to  the  primitive  gods,  the  progenitors  of  the  gods  from  whom  were 
descended  the  heroic  and  sacred  families  of  men,  he  expresses  in  the 
"  TimsDUS  "  his  own  convictions,  without  appealing  to  authority  and  without 
intimating  that  he  is  speaking  of  mysteries  beyond  the  comprehension  of 
his  reason.  The  boldness  of  this  flight  beyond  all  authority  into  the  realms 
of  pure  reason  is  very  striking,  even  if  it  does  end  in  nothing  but  proba- 
bility, which  is  all  that  Plato  claims  for  his  theory. 


THE  SOUL  OF  MAN.  51 

their  own  nature  but  through  his  determination,  seems 
to  have  apprehended  that,  if  he  proceeded  to  construct  the 
other  animals  himself,  they  would  likewise  be  thereby  ren- 
dered of  immortal  duration.  He  therefore  assembled  the 
newly  generated  gods  and  made  to  them  a  personal  address. 
He  informed  them  of  their  immortal  existence,  and  of  his 
purpose  to  confide  to  them  the  construction  of  the  other 
animals,  stating  at  the  same  time,  in  the  case  of  man,  that 
he  would  himself  supply  an  immortal  element  which  they 
were  to  incorporate  with  a  mortal  body,  in  imitation  of  the 
power  which  he  had  exercised  in  the  generation  of  them- 
selves. He  then  proceeded  to  compound  together,  but  in 
inferior  perfection  and  purity,  the  remnant  of  the  same 
elements  out  of  which  he  had  formed  the  cosmical  soul.* 
He  then  distributed  the  whole  of  this  mass  into  souls  equal 
in  number  to  the  fixed  stars,  placed  each  of  them  in  a  star 
of  its  own,  where  it  would  be  carried  round  in  the  cosmi- 
cal rotation,  explained  to  it  its  immortal  destiny,  and  that 
at  an  appointed  hour  of  birth  it  would  be  transferred  into 
a  mortal  body  in  conjunction  with  two  inferior  kinds  of 
soul  or  mind.  These  irrational  enemies,  the  two  inferior 
souls,  the  rational  and  immortal  soul  would  have  to  con- 
trol and  subdue,  so  as  to  live  a  good  life.  If  it  triumphed 
in  the  conflict,  it  would  return  after  death  to  its  own  star, 
where  in  an  everlasting  abode  it  would  dwell  forever  in 
unison  with  the  celestial  harmonies  and  perfections  of  the 
outer  sphere.     But,  if  it  failed,  it  would  be  born  again  into 

*  It  must  be  remembered  that,  in  the  formation  of  the  cosmical  soul, 
the  ingredients  were  the  eternal  Ideas  ;  of  these  there  could  be  a  remnant 
after  the  cosmical  soul  was  formed.  But  the  cosmical  body,  which  was 
formed  out  of  the  material  elements,  comprehended  the  whole  of  them,  and 
there  could  be  no  remnant  or  surplus  of  them  remaining  outside.  But 
portions  of  them  could  be  borrowed  for  a  limited  period  of  mortal  exist- 
ence, and  would  return  to  their  place  in  the  Kosmos  when  that  existence 
terminated.    If  this  distinction  be  carried  along,  Plato  will  not  be  found 

to  be  inconsistent  with  himself. 
4 


52  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

an  inferior  body,  and  on  the  death  of  that  body,  if  it  con- 
tinued evil,  it  would  be  again  born  into  a  still  more  de- 
graded animal,  through  an  indefinite  transmigration  from 
animal  to  animal,  until  the  rational  soul  should  have  ob- 
tained the  mastery  over  the  irrational  and  turbulent,  when 
it  would  be  released  and  permitted  to  return  to  its  own 
peculiar  star.*  Here,  then,  the  Demiurgus  retired,  leaving 
to  the  gods  the  work  of  fabricating  mortal  bodies  for  man, 
and  two  mortal  and  inferior  souls,  with  which  the  immor- 
tal soul  was  to  be  joined.  But  before  he  withdrew  he  in- 
culcated upon  the  gods  to  construct  the  new  mortal  animal 
in  the  best  manner,  so  that  the  immortal  soul  should  have 
the  fairest  chance  of  guiding  and  governing  rightly,  in 
order  that  the  animal  might  not  be  the  cause  of  mischief 
and  misery  to  himself  ;  a  possible  and  even  probable  result 
which  the  Demiurgus  proclaimed  beforehand,  thus  reliev- 
ing himself  of  responsibility,  and  casting  it,  it  would  seem, 
upon  the  gods,  f  The  latter  stood,  then,  in  the  position  of 
workmen,  who  have  received  certain  directions  from  a 
superior  architect,  have  been  supplied  with  certain  materi- 
als, and  are  obliged  to  conform  to  a  prescribed  model,  the 

*  It  does  not  distinctly  appear  what  was  to  become  of  the  rational  soul 
if  it  finally  failed  in  the  conflict  with  evil,  at  the  lowest  end  of  the  trans- 
migration. Being  immortal,  it  could  not  perish.  But  in  providing  for  it 
an  opportunity  of  final  success  through  all  the  forms  of  animal  life  to 
which  it  might  be  condemned,  it  would  seem  that  Plato  was  pressed  by  a 
reluctance  to  encounter  the  idea  of  endless  misery.  This  point,  however, 
does  not  obscure  his  explanation  of  the  process  by  which  species  of  ani- 
mals, and  a  succession  of  inferior  animals,  came  to  exist. 

f  Mr.  Grote  has  pointed  out  that  in  his  other  writings,  notably  in  the 
"  Republic  "  and  in  the  "  Leges,"  Plato  is  not  consistent  with  this  idea  that 
the  gods  are  responsible  for  th^  evil  that  man  causes  to  himself ;  and  that 
in  the  "  Timoeus  "  he  plainly  makes  the  Demiurgus  responsible,  because  he 
brings,  or  allows  to  be  brought,  an  immortal  soul  down  from  its  star,  where 
it  was  living  pure,  intelligent,  and  in  harmony  with  reason,  and  makes  it 
incur  corruption,  disturbance,  and  stupidity,  by  junction  with  a  mortal 
body  and  two  mortal  and  inferior  souls. 


TKIPLICITY  OF  SOULS.  53 

cosmical  animal,  as  far  as  circumstances  will  allow.  The 
Demiurgus  retires,  and  leaves  the  gods  to  their  work. 

They  borrow  from  the  Kosmos,  from  which  they  are 
permitted  to  obtain  materials,  portions  of  the  four  ele- 
ments, for  the  construction  of  the  human  body,  with  an 
engagement  that  these  materials  shall  one  day  be  returned. 
These  they  unite  in  one  body  by  numerous  minute  and 
invisible  fastenings ;  over  this  body  they  place  a  head  or 
cranium,  into  which  they  introduce  the  immortal  soul, 
making  the  head,  with  its  spherical  form  like  that  of  the 
Kosmos,  and  admitting  of  no  motion  but  the  rotary,  the 
most  divine  portion  of  the  human  system  and  master  of 
the  body,  which  is  to  be  subject  and  ministerial.  To  the 
body  they  give  all  the  six  varieties  of  motive  power,  for- 
ward, backward,  upward,  downward,  to  the  right  and  to 
the  left.  The  phenomena  of  nutrition  and  sensation  begin 
as  soon  as  the  connection  is  formed  between  the  immortal 
soul  and  the  mortal  body,  but  as  the  irregular  movements 
and  agitations  arising  from  the  diverse  rotations  of  the 
Same  and  the  Different  convey  false  and  foolish  afiBrmations 
to  the  soul  in  the  cranium,  that  soul  is  destitute  of  intelli- 
gence when  first  joined  to  the  body,  and  remains  so  for 
some  time.  But  gradually  these  disturbing  currents  abate, 
the  rotations  of  the  Same  and  the  Different  in  the  head 
become  more  regular,  and  the  man  becomes  more  intelli- 
gent. 

It  is  now  necessary  to  account  for  the  introduction  of 
the  two  mortal  souls,  and  to  show  how  the  conflict  ap- 
pointed for  the  immortal  soul  became  the  test  of  a  life 
which  was  to  determine  whether  the  latter  should  be  per- 
mitted, on  the  death  of  the  body,  to  return  to  its  peculiar 
star,  or  whether  it  should  be  degraded  into  some  lower 
form  of  animal.  The  immortal  soul  has  its  special  abode 
in  the  head,  which  is  both  united  to  and  separated  from 
the  trunk  by  the  neck.     The  gods  kept  the  two  mortal 


54  CREATION"  OR  EVOLUTION? 

souls  separate,  so  that  the  rational  or  immortal  soul  might 
be  defiled  by  the  contact  as  little  as  possible.  The  better 
portion  of  the  mortal  soul  they  placed  in  the  thoracic 
cavity.  It  was  the  energetic,  courageous,  contentious  soul, 
placed  above  the  diaphragm,  so  as  to  receive  orders  easily 
from  the  head,  and  to  aid  the  rational  soul  in  keeping  the 
mutinous  soul  of  appetite,  which  was  placed  below  the 
diaphragm,  in  subjection. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  follow  here  the  minute  anatomical 
descriptions  which  Plato  gives  of  the  different  organs  of 
the  human  body,  or  of  the  way  in  which  they  are  supposed 
to  act  on  the  two  divisions  of  the  mortal  soul,  or  to  be 
acted  on  by  them,  or  the  mode  in  which  the  latter  act 
upon  the  encephalic  or  immortal  soul  which  is  seated  in 
the  cranium.  These  descriptions  evince  much  knowledge 
of  the  human  anatomy,  and  probably  all  the  knowledge 
that  was  possessed  in  Plato's  time.  It  is  immaterial  how 
far  this  anatomical  knowledge  was  correct,  and  of  course 
there  was  in  Plato's  use  of  the  various  organs  a  great  deal 
that  was  fanciful.  It  is  sufficient,  without  following  Mr. 
Grote's  analysis  through  these  details,  to  note  that,  in 
Plato's  arrangement,  the  immortal  soul  was  supposed  to  be 
fastened  in  the  brain,  the  two  mortal  souls  in  the  line  of 
the  spinal  marrow  continuous  with  the  brain,  and  that  this 
line  formed  the  thread  of  connection  between  them  all. 

Passing  on  toward  the  point  where  the  process  of  degra- 
dation might  begin,  which  would  result  in  the  reduction 
of  this  new  and  divinely  constructed  animal  to  a  lower 
form,  we  have  to  note,  first,  that  it  was  made  a  non-sexual 
animal,  being  intended  for  an  angelic  type.  In  the  origi- 
nal plan  of  the  gods,  it  was  not  contemplated  that  this 
primitive  type  should  reproduce  itself  by  any  process  of 
generation.  According  to  the  original  scheme,  it  would 
seem  that  every  time  a  new  immortal  soul  was  to  be 
brought  down  from  its  peculiar  star,  the  process  of  con- 


ORIGIN  OF  THE  SEXES.  55 

structing  for  it  a  mortal  body  would  have  to  be  repeated. 
Plato,  Mr.  Grote  observes,  does  indeed  tell  us  that  the 
primitive  non-sexual  type  had  the  option  of  maintaining 
itself.  But  this  must  mean  that  each  individual  of  that 
type  had  the  option  of  maintaining  itself  in  its  struggle 
with  the  debasing  influences  of  appetite  and  disease.  But 
not  one  representative  of  it  has  held  his  ground  ;  and  as  it 
was  foreseen  that  such  an  angelic  type  could  not  maintain 
itself,  we  are  to  look  for  a  reconstruction  of  the  whole 
organism.  This  came  about  from  the  degeneracy  of  the 
primitive  non-sexual  animal  below  the  standard  of  good  life 
which  it  had  the  option  of  continuing.  Men  whose  lives 
had  fallen  below  this  standard  became  effeminate,  cowardly, 
unjust.  In  their  second  birth,  their  immortal  souls  had  to 
be  translated  into  a  body  resembling  that  to  which  they  had 
debased  the  first  body  into  which  they  were  bom.  The  first 
transition,  therefore,  was  from  man  into  woman.  In  other 
words,  the  gods,  seeing  that  the  non-sexual  primitive  type 
did  not  maintain  itself  at  the  high  point  intended  for  it, 
reconstructed  the  whole  organism  upon  the  bi-sexual  prin- 
ciple, introducing  the  comparatively  lower  type  of  woman. 
A  partial  transformation  of  the  male  structure  makes  the 
female.  A  suitable  adjustment  of  the  male  organs,  and 
the  implanting  of  the  sexual  impulse  in  both  sexes,  by  the 
agency  of  the  gods,  make  provision  for  generative  repro- 
duction, and  a  species  is  formed,  which  takes  the  place  of 
the  primitive  non-sexual  type  which  did  not  reproduce  itself 
in  the  original  scheme.  The  primitive  type  disappears,  and 
it  disappears  by  a  process  of  degradation,  which  it  under- 
goes by  reason  of  its  failure  to  avail  itself  of  the  option 
which  it  originally  had  of  living  a  good  life  that  would  en- 
title the  immortal  soul  to  return  to  its  peculiar  star  with- 
out further  conflict  with  the  debasing  tendencies  to  which 
it  was  exposed  in  the  first  body  that  it  inhabited. 

In  this  curious  theory  we  see  how  a  process  of  declen- 


66  CEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

sion  or  degradation  is  induced  by  what  may  almost  be 
called  a  choice,  since  the  primitive  human  being,  by  not 
resisting  the  debasing  tendencies  of  his  lower  nature,  is 
made  by  those  tendencies  to  assume  a  less  divine  form  than 
that  in  which  he  originally  existed.  To  the  primitive  man 
the  gods  assigned  the  encephalic  or  head-soul,  which  was 
connected  with  and  suspended  from  the  divine  soul  of  the 
Kosmos.  They  assigned  it  to  each  man  as  his  presiding 
genius.  If  he  neglected  it,  and  directed  all  his  develop- 
ment toward  the  energetic  or  appetitive  mortal  soul,  he 
would  become  debased.  He  did  so.  Hence  it  became 
necessary  for  the  gods  to  reconstruct  the  whole  organism, 
and  in  this  reconstruction  the  primitive  non-sexual  type  be- 
comes the  bi-sexual,  and  a  species  is  formed. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  enter  into  the  metaphysical  argu- 
ment which  relates  to  the  question  of  responsibility  for  this 
change  from  the  original  plan.  Plato  tells  us  that  the 
gods  foresaw  it  as  a  necessary  consequence  of  the  original 
scheme ;  and,  moreover,  that  they  foresaw  that  they  must 
make  preparation  for  the  still  more  degenerate  varieties  of 
birds  and  quadrupeds,  into  which  the  corrupt  and  stupid 
part  of  mankind  would  sink,  all  of  which  were  according 
to  the  great  eternal  scheme  of  the  four  kinds  of  ideal 
animals  embraced  in  the  idea  of  the  Kosmos  itself.  But 
with  the  moral  justice  of  the  whole  theory  we  have  no  con- 
cern here.  We  are  here  concerned,  first,  with  the  nature  of 
the  process  by  which,  in  the  Platonic  theory,  the  bi-sexual 
human  race  became  formed  out  of  the  primitive  non-sexual 
type  ;  and,  next,  with  the  process  by  which  individuals  of 
this  race  became  degraded  into  the  lower  animals.* 

*  I  have  omitted  the  description  of  the  influence  of  disease  induced  by 
an  over-indulgence  of  appetite,  etc.,  in  aiding  the  process  of  debasement 
from  the  primitive  type.  The  reader  can  find  this  influence  developed  in 
Grote,  or  can  consult  the  original  Greek  of  the  "  Timaeus."  It  would  appear 
that  Plato  considered  the  effect  of  all  the  appetites,  when  too  much  in- 


BIRDS  AND  LAND  ANIMALS.  57 

After  the  process  of  degradation  had  begun,  after  the 
primitive  type  had  given  place  to  the  bi-sexual  human  race, 
and  a  species  was  thus  formed,  further  degradation  would 
be  inevitable  under  the  same  causes  which  produced  the  first 
one.  The  female  part  of  mankind  would  go  on  bringing 
forth  new  males  and  new  females,  and  to  each  one  at  birth 
there  would  come  from  its  peculiar  star  an  immortal  soul, 
for  I  do  not  understand  that  Plato's  women  were  supposed 
not  to  be  constructed,  in  this  respect,  upon  the  same  plan 
as  the  men.  But  each  of  these  newly  arrived  immortal 
souls  would  be  placed  in  a  mortal  body  in  contact  and  con- 
flict with  the  two  mortal  souls  of  appetite,  disturbance,  and 
mutiny  against  the  divine  laws  of  reason.  Each  new  human 
being  would  then  be  exposed  to  further  debasement,  by 
which  his  or  her  human  organs  and  human  form  would 
undergo  transformation  into  a  lower  type  of  animal  life. 
Accordingly,  we  find  that  Plato,  in  perfect  consistency  with 
his  theory,  supposes  that  birds  ar6  a  degraded  birth  or 
formation  derived  from  one  peculiar  mode  of  degeneracy  in 
man,  hair  being  transmuted  into  feathers  and  wings.  If 
we  inquire  from  what  kind  of  men  the  birds  were  formed, 
and  how  they  came  to  be  assigned  to  the  air,  we  shall  best 
learn  from  the  words  employed  by  Mr.  Grote  to  express 
Plato's  idea  :  "  Birds  were  formed  from  the  harmless  but 
light,  airy,  and  superficial  men,  who,  though  carrying  their 
minds  aloft  to  the  study  of  cosmical  phenomena,  studied 
them  by  visual  observation  and  not  by  reason,  foolishly 
imagining  that  they  had  discovered  the  way  of  reaching 
truth."* 

Next  to  the  birds  came  the  land-animals,  a  more  brutal 
formation.  These,  to  borrow  the  words  of  Mr.  Grote's 
analysis,  "  proceeded  from  men  totally  destitute  of  philoso- 

dulged,  as  tending  in  the  primitive  non-sexual  type  toward  the  development 
of  that  lower  kind  of  animal  which  the  gods  saw  fit  to  treat  as  fit  only  to 
become  woman.  *  Grote. 


58  CREATION  OR  EYOLUTIOIT? 

phy,  who  neither  looked  up  to  the  heavens  nor  cared  for 
celestial  objects  ;  from  men  making  no  use  whatever  of  the 
rotations  of  their  encephalic  soul,  but  following  exclusively 
the  guidance  of  the  lower  soul  in  the  trunk.  Through  such 
tastes  and  occupations,  both  their  heads  and  their  anterior 
limbs  became  dragged  down  to  the  earth  by  the  force  of 
afl&nity.  Moreover,  when  the  rotation  of  the  encephalic 
soul  from  want  of  exercise  became  slackened  and  fell  into 
desuetude,  the  round  form  of  the  cranium  was  lost  and  be- 
came converted  into  an  oblong  or  some  other  form.  These 
now  degenerated  into  quadrupeds  and  multipeds,  the  gods 
furnishing  a  greater  number  of  feet  in  proportion  to  the 
stupidity  of  each,  in  order  that  its  approximation  to  earth 
might  be  multiplied.  To  some  of  the  more  stupid,  how- 
ever, the  gods  gave  no  feet  or  limbs  at  all,  constraining  them 
to  drag  the  whole  length  of  their  bodies  along  the  ground, 
and  to  become  reptiles.  Out  of  the  most  stupid  and  sense- 
less of  mankind,  by  still  greater  degeneracy,  the  gods 
formed  fishes,  or  aquatic  animals — the  fourth  and  lowest 
genus  after  men,  birds,  land-animals.  This  race  of  beings, 
from  their  extreme  want  of  mind,  were  not  considered 
worthy  to  live  on  earth,  or  to  respire  thin  and  pure  air. 
They  were  condemned  to  respire  nothing  but  deep  and  tur- 
bid water,  many  of  them,  as  oysters  and  other  descriptions 
of  shell-fish,  being  fixed  down  at  the  lowest  depth  or  bot- 
tom. It  is  by  such  transitions  (concludes  the  Platonic 
'  Timaeus ')  that  the  different  races  of  animals  passed  origi- 
nally, and  still  continue  to  pass,  into  each  other.  The  in- 
terchange is  determined  by  the  acquisition  or  loss  of  reason 
or  rationality.*'  * 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  process  of  degradation  by  which 
the  different  races  of  animals  were  formed,  by  a  kind  of 
selection  which,  commencing  in  the  human  species  from  the 
neglect  of  the  encephalic  soul  to  maintain  its  high  duties 

*  Grotc's"  Plato,"  ui,  282. 


PARALLEL  BETWEEN  PLATO  AND  DARWIN.      59 

and  aims,  goes  on  in  successiTe  debasements  which  result  in 
the  formation  of  lower  and  still  lower  animals  until  we  reach 
the  shell-fish  fixed  upon  the  earth  at  the  bottom  of  the 
water.  The  bi-sexual  principle  of  construction  having  been 
introduced  in  the  human  species,  was  continued  through 
all  the  other  species  formed  by  the  still  descending  process 
of  deterioration,  so  that  to  each  successive  species  there  re- 
mained the  power  of  reproducing  its  own  type,  along  with 
the  tendency  to  evolve  a  lower  type  by  further  loss  of  rea- 
son or  rationality.  It  is  not  material  to  the  purpose  of  the 
parallel,  which  I  am  about  to  draw  between  the  Platonic  and 
the  Darwinian  system,  to  consider  the  precise  nature  of  the 
Platonic  idea  of  an  intelligent  power,  by  which  these  suc- 
cessive degradations  were  in  one  sense  purposely  ordained. 
Enough  is  apparent  on  the  Platonic  system  to  show  that, 
while  these  degradations  were  according  to  an  eternal  plan, 
because  they  resulted  from  the  conflict  between  reason  and 
unreason,  order  and  disorder,  between  purity  and  impuri- 
ty, yet  the  different  species  of  animals,  aft^r  man,  were  not 
special  creations  by  an  infinite  power  interfering  in  each 
case  by  a  separate  exercise  of  creative  will.  They  were  a 
growth  of  an  inferior  organization  out  of  a  superior  through 
the  inevitable  operation  of  tendencies  which  changed  the 
forms  of  the  animals.  As  fast  as  these  tendencies  operated 
— and  they  were  continually  operating — the  ministers  of  the 
Demiurgus,  the  gods,  stood  ready  to  adapt  the  structure  to 
the  new  conditions  in  which  the  tendencies  resulted,  so 
that  the  new  animal  might  be  fitted  to  and  fixed  in  those 
conditions.  Still,  the  gods  are  not  represented  as  making 
separate  creations  of  new  species  as  an  act  of  their  will, 
without  the  pre-existing  operation  in  the  preceding  type  of 
tastes  and  occupations  which  modify  the  structure  into  one 
of  a  more  degraded  character.  It  may  thus  be  said  with 
entire  truth  that  the  Platonic  idea  of  the  origin  of  the  dif- 
ferent races  of  animals  presents  a  parallel  to  the  Darwinian 


60  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

theory,  in  which  it  will  be  found  that  the  one  is  the  reverse 
of  the  other,  both  of  them  proceeding  upon  and  involving 
analogous  principles  of  evolution,  operating  in  the  one  sys- 
tem from  below  upward,  and  in  the  other  from  a  higher 
point  downward.  If,  in  the  Platonic  system,  the  idea  of 
an  original  immortal  soul  placed  in  a  heavenly  abode,  but 
afterward  brought  down  and  fixed  in  a  mortal  body,  is  the 
starting-point — if  a  conflict  of  a  spiritual  and  angelic  ex- 
istence with  corporeal  and  earthly  tendencies  is  at  first  the 
predominant  fact — the  parallel  between  the  Platonic  pro- 
cess of  degradation  and  the  Darwinian  process  of  elevation 
remains  the  same ;  for,  in  the  one  system,  reason  degener- 
ates into  instinct,  and  instinct  at  last  reaches  its  lowest  pos- 
sible action,  or  ceases  entirely ;  and,  in  the  other,  instinct 
rises  from  its  lowest  action  through  successive  improve- 
ments until  it  becomes  mind  or  intellect :  so  that  some- 
where in  the  two  j)rocesses  there  must  be  a  point  where 
they  pass  each  other  in  opposite  directions,  the  one  losing 
or  merging  intellect  in  instinct,  the  other  losing  and  merg- 
ing instinct  in  mind,  each  of  the  two  processes  being  a  pro- 
cess of  development  or  evolution,  but  in  opposite  direc- 
tions.* 

It  is  not  easy  to  ascertain  at  once  what  was  Mr.  Dar- 
win's idea  of  the  mode  in  which  a  supreme  intelligence  has 
presided  over  the  creation.  In  his  work  on  "  The  Descent 
of  Man,"  he  adduces  some  evidence  that  man  was  not 
"  originally  endowed  with  the  ennobling  belief  in  the  exist- 
ence of  an  Omnipotent  God,"  this  evidence  being  that  nu- 
merous savage  races  have  existed,  and  still  exist,  who  have 
had  and  have  no  words  in  their  language  to  express  this 
idea.  But  this,  if  true,  does  not  help  us  to  understand 
what  part  in  Mr.  Darwin's  theory  an  Omnipotent  God  is 
supposed  to  play.     Scattered  through  the  same  work  we 

*  See,  as  to  the  reception  of  the  Platonic  Demiurgus  by  the  Alexandrian 
Jews,  first  chapter. 


IMMORTALITY.  61 

find  references  to  the  hypothesis  of  such  a  being,  and  to  the 
influences  which  this  belief  has  exerted  upon  the  advance  of 
morality.  But  I  assume  that  we  are  to  understand  that  Mr. 
Darwin  adopts  as  a  fact,  to  be  taken  into  account  in  judg- 
ing of  his  theory  of  evolution,  that  there  is  such  a  being  as 
an  Omnipotent  God,  having  equally  the  power  to  make 
separate  creations,  or  to  establish  certain  laws  of  matter,  and 
to  leave  them  to  operate  through  secondary  causes  in  the 
production  and  extinction  of  the  past  and  present  inhabit- 
ants of  the  world.  In  his  work  on  the  "  Origin  of  Species  " 
he  refers  to  "  what  we  know  of  the  laws  impressed  upon 
matter  by  the  Creator."*  In  his  *' Descent  of  Man"  the 
following  passage  occurs  toward  the  close  of  the  work  : 
"  He  who  believes  in  the  advancement  of  man  from  some 
low  organized  form  will  naturally  ask,  How  does  this  bear 
on  the  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul  ?  The  barba- 
rous races  of  man,  as  Sir  J.  Lubbock  has  shown,  possess  no 
clear  belief  of  this  kind  ;  but  arguments,  derived  from  the 
primeval  beliefs  of  savages,  are,  as  we  have  just  seen,  of 
little  or  no  avail.  Few  persons  feel  any  anxiety  from  the 
impossibility  of  determining  at  what  precise  period  in  the 
development  of  the  individual,  from  the  first  trace  of  a 
minute  germinal  vesical,  man  becomes  an  immortal  being ; 
and  there  is  no  greater  cause  for  anxiety,  because  the  period 
can  not  possibly  be  determined  in  the  gradually  ascending 
organic  scale." 

Surely  it  is  a  most  pertinent  inquiry.  How  does  his  the- 
ory of  the  advancement  of  man  from  some  lower  organized 
form  bear  on  the  immortality  of  the  soul  ?  and  it  is  no  an- 
swer to  this  inquiry  to  say  that  upon  no  hypothesis  of  man's 
origin  can  we  determine  at  what  precise  period  he  becomes 
an  immortal  being.  That  the  idea  of  an  Omnipotent  God, 
capable  of  creating  a  spiritual  essence,  or  an  immortal  soul, 

*  "  Origin  of  Species,"  p.  428,  American  edition,  from  the  sixth  Eng- 
Ush.     New" York:  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  1882. 


62  CREATIOIT  OR  EVOLUTION? 

is  not  denied  by  Mr.  Darwin,  is  doubtless  to  be  inferred 
from  his  strong  affirmation  that  our  minds  refuse  to  accept 
as  the  result  of  blind  chance  the  grand  sequence  of  events 
which  the  birth  both  of  the  species  and  the  individual 
presents  to  our  view.  That  variations  of  structure,  the 
union  of  pairs  in  marriage,  the  dissemination  of  seeds,  and 
similar  events,  have  all  been  ordained  for  some  special  pur- 
pose, is  the  hypothesis  according  to  which  he  regards  them 
as  events  brought  about  by  the  laws  of  natural  selection, 
which  laws  were  ordained  by  the  Creator  and  left  to  operate. 
Now,  while  this  hypothesis  excludes,  or  tends  to  exclude, 
the  idea  of  blind  chance,  it  still  remains  to  be  considered 
whether  the  soul  of  man,  or  the  essence  which  we  call  in- 
tellect, is  in  each  case  a  direct  creation  of  a  special  charac- 
ter, or  whether  it  is  a  result  from  the  operation  of  the  laws 
which  have  been  ordained  for  the  action  of  organized  matter. 
If  it  is  the  former,  the  soul  may  survive  the  destruction 
of  the  body.  If  it  is  the  latter,  the  soul  as  well  as  all  the 
other  manifestations  or  exhibitions  which  the  material  body 
gives  forth  in  its  action,  may  and  in  all  probability  must 
cease  with  the  organs  whose  action  leads  us  falsely  to  be- 
lieve that  we  are  animated  by  an  immortal  spirit  while  we 
are  in  the  flesh.  If  it  is  a  necessary  result  of  any  theory 
that  what  is  supposed  to  be  the  immortal  soul  of  man  is  a 
product  of  the  operation  of  certain  laws  imposed  upon  or- 
ganized matter,  without  being  a  special  creation  of  some- 
thing distinct  from  matter,  it  is  immaterial  whether  the 
organized  form  of  matter  with  which  the  soul  is  connected, 
or  appears  to  act  for  a  time,  was  a  special  creation,  or  was 
an  evolution  out  of  some  lower  form,  or  came  by  blind 
chance.  Nor  is  it  material  that  we  can  not  determine  at 
what  precise  period  in  the  genesis  of  the  individual,  by  the 
ordinary  process  of  reproduction,  he  becomes  an  immortal 
being.  The  question  is.  Does  he  ever  become  an  immortal 
being,  if  in  body  and  in  mind  he  is  a  mere  product  of  or- 


NOT  A  QUESTION  OF  POWER.  63 

ganized  matter,  formed  from  some  lower  type  through  the 
laws  of  variation  and  natural  selection,  resulting  in  an 
animal  whose  manifestations  or  exhibitions  of  what  we  call 
intellect  or  mind  are  manifestations  of  the  same  nature  as 
the  instincts  of  the  lower  animals,  differing  only  in  degree  ? 
That  I  may  not  be  misunderstood,  and  especially  that  I 
may  not  be  charged  with  misrepresentation,  I  will  state  the 
case  for  the  Darwinian  theory  as  strongly  as  I  can.  The 
question  here  is  obviously  not  a  question  of  power.  An 
Omnipotent  Creator  has  just  the  same  capacity  to  make 
special  creations,  by  a  direct  and  special  exertion  of  his 
will,  as  he  has  to  make  one  primordial  type  and  place 
it  under  fixed  laws  that  will  in  their  operation  cause  a 
physical  organization  to  act  in  such  a  way  as  to  evolve 
out  of  it  other  and  more  or  less  perfect  types.  In  either 
method  of  action,  he  would  be  the  same  Omnipotent  God, 
by  whose  will  all  things  would  exist ;  and  I  assume  that 
upon  this  point  there  is  no  difference  between  some  of 
the  evolution  scliool  and  its  opponents.  But  in  considering 
the  question  of  the  origin  of  the  human  soul,  or  the  intel- 
lect of  man,  we  are  dealing  not  with  a  question  of  power, 
but  with  the  probable  method  in  which  the  conceded  Om- 
nipotent capacity  has  acted.  On  the  one  hand,  we  have 
the  hypothesis  that  the  Eternal  and  Omnipotent  capacity 
has  created  a  spiritual  and  immortal  being,  capable  of  ex- 
isting without  any  union  with  the  body  that  is  formed  out 
of  earthly  material,  but  placed  for  a  time  in  unison  with 
such  a  body  ;  and  that  for  the  effectual  purpose  of  this 
temporary  union  this  body  has  been  specially  constructed, 
and  constructed  in  two  related  forms,  male  and  female,  so 
that  this  created  species  of  animal  may  perpetuate  itself  by 
certain  organic  laws  of  reproduction.  Now  it  is  obviously 
immaterial  that  we  can  not  detect  the  point  of  time,  or  the 
process,  at  or  by  which  the  union  between  the  spiritual 
essence  and  the  earthly  body  takes  place  in  the  generation 


64  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

of  the  individual.  It  is  conceded  to  be  alike  impossible 
to  detect  the  time  or  mode  in  which  descendants  of  the 
lower  animals,  which  had  nothing  resembling  intellect, 
become  endowed  with  and  inhabited  by  intellect,  through 
the  supposed  laws  of  variation  and  natural  selection,  operat- 
ing to  produce  an  animal  of  a  more  elaborate  organization. 
The  point  of  divergence  between  the  two  hypotheses  is  pre- 
cisely this  :  that  the  one  supposes  the  mind  of  man  to  be  a 
special  creation,  of  a  spiritual  nature,  designed  to  be  im- 
mortal, but  placed  in  union  with  a  mortal  body  for  a  tem- 
porary purpose.  The  other  hypothesis  supposes  no  special 
creation  of  either  the  mind  or  the  body  of  man,  but  main- 
tains that  the  latter  is  evolved  out  of  some  lower  animal, 
and  that  the  former  is  evolved  out  of  the  action  of  physical 
organization.*  Either  mode  of  projecting  and  executing 
the  creation  of  both  the  body  and  the  mind  of  man  is  of 
course  competent  to  an  Omnipotent  God.  The  question  is. 
Which  mode  has  the  highest  amount  of  probability  on  which 
to  challenge  our  belief  ?  If  the  one,  as  it  is  described, 
leads  to  the  conclusion  that  the  mind  can  not  survive  the 
body,  and  the  other  leads  to  the  conclusion  that  it  can,  we 
are  left  to  choose  between  them  :  and  our  choice  must  be 
determined  by  what  we  can  discover  of  satisfactory  proof 
that  the  mind  of  man  was  destined  to  become  immortal. 
What,  then,  is  the  Darwinian  theory  of  the  origin  of  man  as 
an  animal,  and  to  what  does  it  lead  respecting  the  origin 
and  nature  of  the  human  soul  ? 

Whoever  will  carefully  examine  Mr.  Darwin's  hypothe- 

*  Mr.  Darwin  refers  to  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's  theory  of  "  the  necessary 
acquirement  of  each  mental  power  and  capacity  by  gradation  " ;  and  indeed 
it  is  apparent  that  this  class  of  philosophers  have  constructed  a  theory 
which  denies  the  creation  of  the  human  mind  as  a  spiritual  essence,  inde- 
pendent of  matter,  although  some  of  them  may  adhere  to  the  idea  that  it 
was  God  who  caused  matter  to  evolve  out  of  its  own  action  the  substance 
or  existence  that  we  call  mind. 


DARWIN'S  NATURAL  SELECTION.  65 

sis  of  the  descent  of  man  as  an  animal,  will  find  that  com- 
mencing at  a  point  opposite  to  that  at  which  Plato  began 
his  speculations,  the  modern  naturalist  assumes  the  exist- 
ence of  a  very  low  form  of  animated  and  organized  mat- 
ter, destitute  of  anything  in  the  nature  of  reason,  even  if 
acting  under  what  may  be  called  instinctive  and  uncon- 
scious impulses,  imposed  upon  it  by  the  preordained  laws 
by  which  animated  matter  is  to  act.  By  some  process  of 
generation,  either  bi-sexual  or  uni-sexual  or  non-sexual,  this 
very  low  type  of  animal  is  endowed  with  a  power  of  repro- 
ducing other  individuals  of  the  same  structure  and  hab- 
its. In  process  of  time,  for  which  we  must  allow  periods 
very  much  longer  than  those  of  which  we  are  accustomed 
to  think  in  relation  to  recorded  history,  the  individuals  of 
this  species  become  enormously  multiplied.  A  struggle  for 
existence  takes  place  between  these  very  numerous  individ- 
uals ;  and  in  this  struggle  there  comes  into  operation  the 
law  to  which  Mr.  Darwin  has  given  the  name  of  "  natural 
selection,"  which  is  but  another  name  for  a  series  of  events. 
He  does  not  mean  by  this  term  to  imply  a  conscious  choice 
on  the  part  of  the  animals,  nor  an  active  power  or  interfer- 
ing deity.  He  employs  it  to  express  a  constantly  occurring 
series  of  events  or  actions,  by  which,  in  certain  circum- 
stances, animals  secure  themselves  against  the  tendency  to 
destruction  which  is  caused  by  the  great  disparity  between 
their  numbers  and  the  amount  of  food  that  is  accessible  to 
them,  or  by  the  unfavorable  influences  of  a  change  of  cli- 
mate upon  so  great  a  body  of  individuals.  He  calls  this 
series  of  events  or  actions  natural  selection,  in  order,  as  I 
understand,  to  compare  what  takes  place  in  nature  with 
what  takes  place  when  a  breeder  of  animals  purposely  se- 
lects the  most  favorable  individuals  for  the  purpose  of  im- 
proving or  varying  the  breed.  In  nature,  the  selection  is 
supposed  to  operate  as  follows  :  The  strongest  and  most 
active  individuals  of  a  species  of  animals  have  the  best 


ee  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

chance  of  securing  the  requisite  amount  of  food  from  the 
supply  that  is  insufficient  for  all.  They  do  this  by  their 
greater  fleetness  in  oyertaking  the  common  prey,  or  by  mak- 
ing war  upon  the  more  feeble  or  inactive  of  their  fellows  ; 
and  numerous  individuals  are  either  directly  destroyed  by 
this  warfare,  or  are  driven  off  from  the  feeding-ground  and 
perish  for  want  of  nourishment.  Thus  the  best  specimens 
of  the  race  survive  ;  and  to  this  occurrence  is  given  the  name 
of  the  "  survival  of  the  fittest,"  meaning  the  survival  of  those 
individuals  best  fitted  to  continue  their  own  existence  and 
to  continue  their  species.  A  physical  change  in  the  country 
inhabited  by  a  great  multitude  of  individuals  of  a  certain 
species,  or  by  different  species — for  example,  a  change  of  cli- 
mate— operates  to  make  this  struggle  for  existence  still  more 
severe,  and  the  result  would  be  that  those  individuals  of  the 
same  species  which  could  best  adapt  themselves  to  their  new 
condition  would  tend  to  be  preserved,  as  would  the  differ- 
ent species  inhabiting  the  same  country  which  could  best 
maintain  the  struggle  against  other  species.  The  improve- 
ment in  the  structure  of  the  animals  takes  place,  under  this 
process  of  natural  selection,  in  the  following  manner  :  The 
best  individuals  being  preserved,  the  organs  of  which  they 
make  most  use  in  the  struggle  for  existence  undergo  devel- 
opment and  slight  modifications,  favorable  to  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  individual,  and  these  modifications  are  trans- 
mitted to  their  offspring.  Here  there  comes  in  play  a  kind 
of  collateral  aid  to  which  is  given  the  name  of  *'  sexual 
selection,"  which  is  defined  as  a  form  of  selection  depend- 
ing "  not  on  a  struggle  for  existence  in  relation  to  other 
organic  beings  or  to  external  conditions,  but  on  a  struggle 
between  individuals  of  one  sex,  generally  the  males,  for  the 
possession  of  the  other  sex."*  "The  result,"  continues 
Mr.  Darwin,  "  is  not  death  to  the  unsuccessful  competitor, 

*  "  Origin  of  Species,"  p.  69. 


NATURAL  AND  SEXUAL  SELECTION.  67 

but  few  or  no  offspring.  Sexual  selection  is,  therefore,  less 
rigorous  than  natural  selection.  Generally,  the  most  vigor- 
ous males,  those  which  are  best  fitted  for  their  place  in 
nature,  will  leave  most  progeny.  But,  in  many  cases,  vic- 
tory depends  not  so  much  on  general  vigor,  as  on  having 
special  weapons,  confined  to  the  male  sex."  As,  by  means 
of  this  warfare  of  sexual  selection,  the  victor  would  always 
be  allowed  to  breed,  his  courage  and  his  special  weapons  of 
offense  or  defense,  in  their  increased  development,  would 
descend  to  his  offspring.  Thus  the  improvement  and 
modification  induced  by  natural  selection  would  be  enhanced 
and  transmitted  by  the  sexual  selection.* 

In  regard  to  the  operation  of  the  two  kinds  of  selection 
in  the  evolution  of  man  from  a  lower  form  of  animal,  we 
find  the  theory  to  be  this  :  That  organic  beings  with 
peculiar  habits  and  structure  have  passed  through  transi- 
tions which  have  converted  the  primordial  animal  into  one 
of  totally  different  habits  and  structure ;  that,  in  these 
transitions,  organs  adapted  to  one  condition  and  mode  of 
life  have  become  adapted  to  another ;  that  such  organs  are 
homologous,  and  that  in  their  widely  varied  uses  they  have 
been  formed  by  transitional  gradations,  so  that,  for  ex- 
ample, a  floating  apparatus,  or  swim-bladder,  existing  in  a 
water-animal  for  one  purpose — flotation — has  become  con- 
verted in  the  vertebrate  animals  into  true  lungs  for  the 
very  different  purpose  of  respiration.  Thus,  by  ordinary 
generation,  from  an  ancient  and  unknown  prototype,  not 

*  For  the  illustrations  of  both  kinds  of  selection  I  must  refer  the  reader 
to  Mr.  Darwin's  works.  In  regard  to  birds,  he  makes  the  sexual  selection 
operate  less  by  the  "  law  of  battle  "  among  the  males,  or  by  fighting,  and 
more  by  the  attractions  of  plumage  and  voice,  by  which  the  males  carry  on 
their  rivalry  for  the  choice  of  the  females  in  pairing.  But  he  attributes  the 
same  effect  to  the  sexual  selection  in  birds  as  in  the  other  animals,  namely, 
the  transmission  to  offspring,  and  chiefly  to  the  male  offspring,  of  those 
peculiarities  of  structure  which  have  given  to  the  male  parent  the  victory 
over  his  competitors. 


68  CKEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

only  have  organs,  by  minute  and  successive  transitions,  be- 
come adapted  to  changed  conditions  of  life,  but  the  whole 
organism  has  become  changed,  and  this  has  resulted  in  the 
production  of  an  animal  vastly  superior  to  his  ancient  and 
unknown  prototype  ;  and  yet  to  that  prototype,  of  which  we 
have  no  specimen  and  no  record,  are  to  be  traced  the  germs 
of  all  the  peculiarities  of  structure  which  we  find  in  the  per- 
fect animals  of  different  kinds  that  we  thoroughly  know, 
until  we  come  to  man,  these  successive  results  being  brought 
about  by  the  two  kinds  of  selection — natural  and  sexual. 

There  can  be  no  better  illustration  of  the  character  of 
Mr.  Darwin's  theory  than  that  to  which  he  resorts  when 
he  means  to  carry  it  to  its  most  startling  length,  while  he 
candidly  admits  that  he  has  felt  the  difficulty  of  this  appli- 
cation of  it  far  too  keenly  to  be  surprised  at  the  hesitation 
of  others.  This  illustration  is  the  eye.  Here  he  very 
justly  says  it  is  indispensable  that  reason  should  conquer 
imagination ;  but  on  which  side  of  the  question  reason  or 
imagination  is  most  employed  might,  perhaps,  be  doubt- 
ful. Mr.  Darwin's  hypothesis  concerning '  the  eye  begins 
with  the  fact  that  in  the  highest  division  of  the  animal 
kingdom,  the  vertebrata,  we  can  start  from  an  eye  so  sim- 
ple that  it  consists,  as  in  the  lancelet,*  of  a  little  sack  of 
transparent  skin,  furnished  with  a  nerve,  and  lined  with 
pigment,  but  destitute  of  any  other  apparatus.  From  this 
prototype  of  a  visual  organ,  up  to  the  marvelous  construc- 
tion of  the  eye  of  man  or  of  the  eagle,  he  supposes  that  ex- 
tremely slight  and  gradual  modifications  have  led,  by  the 
operation  of  natural  and  sexual  selection ;  and  by  way  of 
illustrating  this  development,  he  compares  the  formation 
of  the  eye  to  the  formation  of  the  telescope.  *^It  is 
scarcely  possible  to  avoid  comparing  the  eye  with  a  tele- 

*  A  very  low  form  of  fish,  without  brain,  vertebral  column,  or  heart, 
classed  by  the  older  naturalists  among  the  worms.  ("  Descent  of  Man,"  p. 
159.)    The  technical  name  of  the  lancelet  is  Amphioxus. 


THE  EYE  AND  THE  TELESCOPE.  69 

scope.  We  know  that  this  instrument  has  been  perfected 
by  the  long-continued  efforts  of  the  highest  human  intel- 
lects, and  we  naturally  infer  that  the  eye  has  been  formed 
by  a  somewhat  analogous  process.  But  may  not  this  infer- 
ence be  presumptuous  ?  Have  we  any  right  to  assume  that 
the  Creator  works  by  intellectual  powers  like  those  of  man  ? 
If  we  must  compare  the  eye  to  an  optical  instrument,  we 
ought,  in  imagination,  to  take  a  thick  layer  of  transparent 
tissue,  with  spaces  filled  with  fluid,  and  with  a  nerve  sensi- 
tive to  light  beneath,  and  then  suppose  every  part  of  this 
layer  to  be  continually  changing  slowly  in  density,  so  as  to 
separate  into  layers  of  different  densities  and  thickness, 
placed  at  different  distances  from  each  other,  and  with  the 
surface  of  each  layer  slowly  changing  in  form.  Further, 
we  must  suppose  that  there  is  a  power,  represented  by 
natural  selection  or  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  always 
watching  each  slight  alteration  in  the  transparent  layers, 
and  carefully  preserving  each  which,  under  varied  circum- 
stances, in  any  way  or  in  any  degree,  tends  to  produce  a 
distincter  image.  We  must  suppose  each  new  state  of  the 
instrument  to  be  multiplied  by  the  million,  each  to  be  pre- 
served until  a  better  one  is  produced,  and  then  the  old  ones 
to  be  all  destroyed.  In  living  bodies  variations  will  cause 
the  slight  alterations,  generation  will  multiply  them  almost 
infinitely,  and  natural  selection  will  pick  out  with  unerring 
skill  each  improvement.  Let  this  process  go  on  for  mill- 
ions of  years,  and  during  each  year  on  millions  of  individ- 
uals of  many  kinds,  and  may  we  not  believe  that  a  living  op- 
tical instrument  might  thus  be  formed  as  superior  to  one  of 
glass  as  the  works  of  the  Creator  are  to  those  of  man  ?  "  * 

It  might  have  occurred  to  the  very  learned  naturalist 
that  the  formation  of  a  mechanical  instrument  by  the  hand 
of  man,  guided  by  his  intellect,  admits  of  varieties  of  that 

*  "  Origin  of  Species,"  p.  146. 


70  CREATION   OR  EVOLUTION? 

instrument  for  different  purposes,  as  products  of  an  intelli- 
gent will.  Different  kinds  of  telescopes  for  different  uses 
have  been  produced,  not  by  destroying  the  poorer  ones  and 
preserving  the  better  ones,  but  by  a  special  and  intentional 
adaptation  of  the  structure  to  special  uses,  until  an  instru- 
ment is  made  which  will  dissolve  the  nebulae  of  the  milky 
way,  and  bring  within  the  reach  of  our  vision  heavenly 
bodies  of  the  existence  of  which  we  had  no  previous  knowl- 
edge. Why  may  not  the  same  intelligent  and  intentional 
formation  of  the  human  eye,  as  a  special  structure  adapted 
to  the  special  conditions  of  such  an  animal  as  man,  have 
been  the  direct  work  of  the  Creator,  just  as  the  lowest 
visual  organ — that  of  such  a  creature  as  the  lancelet — was 
specially  made  for  the  conditions  of  its  existence  ?  "Why 
resort  to  the  theory  that  all  the  intermediate  varieties  of 
the  eye  have  grown  successively  out  of  the  lowest  form  of 
such  an  organ  by  transitional  grades  of  which  we  can  not 
trace  the  series,  when  the  probabilities  concerning  the 
varieties  of  this  organ  of  which  we  have  any  knowledge  are 
so  strongly  on  the  side  of  a  special  and  intentional  adapta- 
tion of  each  one  to  the  circumstances  of  the  animal  to 
which  it  has  been  given  ?  As  a  question  of  power  in  the 
Creator,  either  method  of  action  was  of  course  just  as  com- 
petent as  the  other.  As  a  question  of  which  was  his  prob- 
able method,  the  case  is  very  different ;  for  we  know  com- 
paratively very  little  of  the  modifications  produced  by  such 
causes  as  natural  or  even  sexual  selection,  while  we  may, 
without  presumption,  assume  that  we  know  much  more 
about  the  purposes  of  special  adaptation  to  special  condi- 
tions, which  an  omnipotent  Creator  may  have  designed  and 
effected.  But  this  is  a  digression,  and  also  an  anticipation 
of  the  argument. 

To  state  the  pedigree  of  man  according  to  the  Darwin- 
ian theory,  we  must  begin  with  an  aquatic  animal  as  the 
early  progenitor  of  all  the  vertebrata.     This  animal  exist- 


DARWIN'S  PEDIGREE   OF  MAN".  71 

ing,  it  is  assumed,  *^in  the  dim  obscurity  of  tbe  past,"  was 
provided  with  branchiae  or  gills,  or  organs  for  respiration 
in  water,  with  the  two  sexes  united  in  the  same  individual, 
but  with  the  most  important  organs  of  the  body,  such  as 
the  brain  and  heart,  imperfectly  or  not  at  all  developed. 
From  this  fish-like  animal,  or  from  some  of  its  fish  descend- 
ants, there  was  developed  an  amphibious  creature,  with  the 
sexes  distinct.  Eising  from  the  amphibians,  through  a 
long  line  of  diversified  forms,  we  come  to  an  ancient  mar- 
supial animal,  an  order  in  which  the  young  are  born  in  a 
very  incomplete  state  of  development,  and  carried  by  the 
mother,  while  sucking,  in  a  ventral  pouch.*  From  the 
marsupials  came  the  quadrumana  f  and  all  the  higher  mam- 
mals. I  Among  these  mammals  there  was,  it  is  supposed, 
a  hairy,  tailed  quadruped,  probably  arboreal  in  its  habits, 
from  which  man  is  descended.  It  was  an  inhabitant  of 
the  Old  World.  It  branched  into  the  lemuridse,  a  group 
of  four-handed  animals,  distinct  from  the  monkeys,  and 
resembling  the  insectivorous  quadrupeds  in  some  of  their 
characters  and  habits  ;*  and  from  these  came  the  simiadae, 
of  which,  there  were  two  great  stems — the  New  World  and 
Old  World  monkeys.  *'  From  the  latter,  at  a  remote 
period,  man,  the  wonder  and  glory  of  the  universe,  pro- 
ceeded."! 

*  The  kangaroos  and  opossums  are  of  this  group, 
f  Animals  with  four  hands. 

if  Animals  jvhich  produce  living  young,  and  nourish  them  after  birth  by 
milk  from  the  teats  of  the  mother. 

*  The  lemur  is  one  of  a  genus  of  four-handed  mammals,  allied  to  the 
apes,  baboons,  and  monkeys,  but  with  a  form  approaching  that  of  quadru- 
peds. 

g  "Descent  of  Man,"  p.  165. — The  reader  will  need  to  observe  that 
monkey  is  the  popular  name  of  the  ape  and  the  baboon.  In  zoology, 
monkey  designates  the  animals  of  the  genus  Simla,  which  have  long  tails. 
The  three  classes  are  apes,  without  tails ;  monkeys,  with  long  tails ;  baboons, 
with  short  tails. 


72  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

The  reader  must  now,  in  order  to  do  justice  to  this  the- 
ory, imagine  a  lapse  of  time,  from  the  period  of  the  exist- 
ence of  the  aquatic  progenitor  of  all  the  vertebrata,  to  be 
counted  by  millions  of  years,  or  by  any  figures  that  will 
represent  to  the  mind  the  most  conceivable  distance  be- 
tween a  past  and  a  present  epoch.  Through  this  enormous 
stretch  of  centuries,  in  order  to  give  scope  to  the  operation 
of  the  laws  of  natural  and  sexual  selection,  we  must  sup- 
pose the  struggle  for  existence  to  be  going  on  among  the 
individuals  of  the  same  species,  and  among  different  spe- 
cies inhabiting  the  same  country,  and  the  sexual  selection 
among  the  individuals  of  the  same  species  to  be  perpetually 
transmitting  to  offspring  the  improved  and  more  developed 
organs  and  powers  induced  by  natural  selection  ;  so  that  in 
the  countless  sequence  of  generations  there  are  evolved  ani- 
mals that  are  so  widely  different  from  their  remote  pro- 
genitors that  in  classifying  them  we  find  them  to  be  new 
species,  endowed  with  a  power  of  reproducing  their  own 
type,  and  similarly  callable,  it  would  seem,  of  still  further 
development  into  even  higher  types  in  the  long-distant 
future. 

I  know  not  how  it  may  appear  to  others,  but  to  me  the 
parallelism  between  the  Platonic  and  the  Darwinian  theory 
is  very  striking.  Both  speculators  assume  the  existence  of 
a  Supreme  Intelligence  and  Power,  presiding  over  the 
creation  of  animals  which  are  to  inhabit  this  earth.  Be- 
hind the  celestial  or  primitive  gods  the  Greek  philosopher 
places  the  Demiurgus,  to  whom  the  gods  statfd  in  the  re- 
lation of  ministers  or  servants  to  execute  his  will.  The 
modern  naturalist  assumes  the  existence  of  the  Omnipo- 
tent God  ;  and  although  he  does  not  directly  personify  the 
laws  of  natural  and  sexual  selection  which  the  Omnipotent 
power  has  made  to  operate  in  nature,  they  perform  an  office 
in  the  transitional  gradations  through  which  the  animals  are 
successively  developed,  that  very  closely  resembles  the  office 


PLATO'S  THEORY.  73 

performed  by  the  gods  of  Plato's  system  in  providing  the 
modifications  of  strnctm-e  which  the  animals  undergo.  In 
the  two  processes  the  one  is  the  reversed  complement  of 
the  other..  Plato  begins  with  the  formation  of  an  animal  of 
a  very  exalted  type,  and  by  successive  degradations,  induced 
by  the  failure  of  the  animal  to  live  up  to  the  high  standard 
of  its  rational  existence,  he  supposes  a  descent  into  lower 
and  still  lower  forms,  the  gods  all  the  while  providing  a 
new  structure  for  each  successive  lower  form,  until  we 
reach  the  shell-fish  fixed  on  the  earth  beneath  the  water. 
Darwin  begins  with  the  lowest  form  of  animated  organiza- 
tion, and  by  successive  gradations  induced  by  the  struggle 
of  the  animal  to  maintain  its  existence,  he  supposes  an  as- 
cent into  higher  and  still  higher  forms,  the  laws  of  natural 
and  sexual  selection  operating  to  develop  a  new  structure 
for  each  successive  higher  form,  until  we  reach  man,  "  the 
wonder  and  glory  of  the  universe,"  an  animal  whose  imme- 
diate ancestor  was  the  same  as  the  monkey's,  and  whose  re- 
mote progenitor  was  an  aquatic  creature  breathing  by  gills 
and  floating  by  a  swim-bladder. 

Nor  had  Plato  less  of  probability  to  support  his  theory 
than  Darwin  had  to  support  his.  The  Greek  philosopher 
might  have  adduced  the  constant  spectacle  of  men  debas- 
ing their  habits  and  even  their  physical  appearance  into  a 
resemblance  to  the  brutes.  He  might  have  suggested,  and 
he  does  suggest,  how  the  degrading  tendencies  of  the  lower 
appetites  and  the  ravages  of  disease  drag  down  the  human 
frame  from  its  erect  carriage  and  its  commanding  power 
over  matter  to  an  approximation  with  the  condition  of  the 
inferior  animals.  He  might  have  adduced  innumerable 
proofs  of  the  loss  of  reason,  or  rationality,  through  succes- 
sive generations  of  men,  brought  about  by  the  transmission 
of  both  appetites  and  physical  malformation  from  parents 
to  children.  He  might  have  compared  one  of  his  Athenian 
fellow-citizens  of  the  higher  class  with  the  lowest  savage 


74  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

known  throughout  all  the  regions  accessible  to  an  observer 
of  his  day  and  country.  He  might  have  portrayed  the  one 
as  a  being  preserving  his  physical  organization  in  the  high- 
est state  of  perfection  by  gymnastic  exercises,  by  a  well- 
chosen  diet,  by  observance  of  all  the  conditions  of  health, 
by  the  aid  of  the  highest  medical  skill  known  to  the  age  ; 
cultivating  his  mind  by  philosophy,  practicing  every  public 
and  private  virtue  as  they  were  understood  among  a  people 
of  rare  refinement,  and  adorning  his  race  by  an  exhibition 
of  the  highest  qualities  that  were  then  attainable.  All 
these  qualities,  physical,  mental,  and  moral,  Plato  might 
have  shown  were  transmissible  in  some  degree,  and  in  a 
good  degree  were  actually  transmitted  from  sire  to  son. 
Turning  to  the  other  picture,  and  comparing  "  Hyperion 
to  the  satyr,"  he  might  have  shown  that  the  lowest  sav- 
age, in  those  physical  points  of  structure  which  were  best 
adapted  to  his  animal  preservation  as  an  inhabitant  of  the 
wildest  portion  of  the  earth,  had  retained  those  which 
made  him  more  nearly  resemble  the  brute  inhabitants  of 
the  same  region,  and  that  in  his  intellectual  and  moral 
qualities  the  resemblance  between  him  and  his  Athenian 
contemporary  was  almost  wholly  lost.  Intermediate  be- 
tween these  extreme  specimens  of  the  human  race,  why 
could  not  Plato  have  found  with  great  probability,  and 
often  with  actual  proof,  successive  degradations  of  struct- 
ure and  uses  of  organs,  just  as  well  supported  by  facts,  or 
analogies,  or  hypotheses,  as  are  Mr.  Darwin's  successive 
elevations  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  animal  ?  If  Plato  had 
known  as  much  about  the  animal  kingdom  as  is  now  known, 
he  could  have  arrayed  the  same  facts  in  support  of  his  the- 
ory, by  an  argument  as  powerful  as  that  which  now  sup- 
ports the  doctrine  of  evolution. 

Nay,  it  is  certain  that  Plato's  attention  was  drawn  to 
some  of  these  facts,  and  that  he  makes  use  of  them  in  a 
way  that  is  as  legitimately  a  probable  occurrence  as  any  use 


RUDIMEi^TS.  75 

that  is  made  of  them  at  the  present  day.  For  example,  he 
was  struck  with  the  existence  of  what  in  scientific  parlance 
are  called  "rudiments,"  a  term  that  is  employed  to  describe 
an  organ  or  part  which  appears  to  have  no  special  use  where 
it  is  found  in  one  animal,  but  which,  in  a  more  developed 
or  in  a  diversified  condition,  has  an  obvious  use  in  another 
animal.  Thus,  he  tells  us  that  the  gods,  with  a  long- 
sighted providence,  introduced  a  sketch  or  rudiment  of 
nails  into  the  earliest  organization  of  man,  foreseeing  that 
the  lower  animals  would  be  produced  from  the  degeneration 
of  man,  and  that  to  them  claws  and  nails  would  be  abso- 
lutely indispensable."  *  In  the  same  way,  he  seems  to  re- 
gard hair  as  a  rudiment,  relatively  speaking  ;  for  while  its 
use  on  dijfferent  parts  of  the  body  of  man,  or  even  on  the 
head,  is  not  very  apparent,  its  use  to  the  lower  animals  is 
very  obvious.  Why,  then,  is  it  not  just  as  rational,  and 
just  as  much  in  accordance  with  proper  scientific  reasoning, 
to  suppose  those  parts  of  animal  structure  which  are  called 
"rudiments"  to  have  been  introduced  as  mere  sketches  in 
the  organization  of  a  very  high  animal,  and  then  to  have 
been  developed  into  special  uses  in  lower  animals  produced 
by  the  degeneration  of  the  higher,  as  it  is  to  suppose  that 
they  were  developed  in  full  activity  and  use  in  the  lower 
animals,  but  sank  into  the  condition  of  useless  or  compara- 
tively useless  appendages  as  the  higher  animal  was  evolved 
out  of  the  lower  by  a  process  of  elevation  ?  The  modern 
naturalist  of  the  evolution  school  will  doubtless  say  that 
"rudiments"  in  the  human  structure,  for  which  there  is 
no  assignable  use  that  can  be  observed,  are  not  to  be  ac- 
counted for  as  sketches  from  which  Nature  was  to  work, 
in  finding  for  them  a  use  in  some  other  animal  in  a  devel- 
oped and  practically  important  condition  ;  that,  to  the  ex- 
tent to  which  such  things  are  found  in  man,  they  are  proofs 

*  Grote,  iii,  p.  276. 


T6  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

of  his  cognate  relations  to  the  lower  animals,  in  which  they 
have  a  palpable  use  ;  and  that  the  gradations  by  which  they 
have  proceeded  from  practical  and  important  vises  in  the 
lower  animals,  until  they  have  become  mere  useless  or  com- 
paratively useless  sketches  in  the  human  structure,  are 
among  the  proofs  of  the  descent  of  man  from  the  lower  ani- 
mals which  had  a  use  for  such  things.  I  shall  endeavor 
hereafter  to  examine  the  argument  that  is  derived  from 
'* rudiments''  more  closely.  At  present,  the  point  which 
I  suggest  to  the  mind  of  the  reader  arises  in  the  parallel 
between  the  Platonic  and  the  Darwinian  theory  of  the  ori- 
gin of  the  different  species  of  animals.  I  ask,  why  is  it  not 
just  as  probably  a  true  hypothesis  to  suppose  that  man  was 
first  created  with  these  rudimentary  sketches  in  his  organi- 
zation, and  that  they  became  useful  appendages  in  the  lower 
animals,  into  which  man  became  degenerated,  as  it  is  to 
suppose  that  these  parts  existed  in  full  development,  ac- 
tivity, and  practical  use  in  the  lower  animals,  out  of  whom 
man  was  generated,  and  that  in  man  they  lost  their  utility 
and  became  relatively  mere  rudiments  ?  To  my  mind, 
neither  theory  has  the  requisite  amount  of  probability  in 
its  favor  compared  with  the  probability  of  special  creations  ; 
but  I  can  see  as  much  probability  in  the  Platonic  as  in  the 
Darwinian  explanation,  and  a  strong  parallelism  between 
them. 

I  will  pursue  this  parallel  somewhat  further  by  again 
adverting  to  Plato's  idea  of  the  origin  of  the  human  soul. 
He  supposes  it  to  have  been  an  immortal  being,  formed  out 
of  the  eternal  essence  of  Ideas  by  the  Demiurgus.  He 
manifestly  makes  it  an  existence  distinct  from  matter,  be- 
cause he  places  its  first  abode  in  a  heavenly  mansion,  where 
it  is  in  unison  with  the  celestial  harmonies  and  perfections 
of  the  outer  circle.  This  heavenly  sphere  is  again  to  be  its 
abode,  after  it  shall  have  been  released  from  its  temporary 
abode  on  earth,  which  has  been  appointed  to  it  for  purposes 


PLATO'S  ORIGIN  OF  THE  SOUL.  7Y 

of  discipline  and  trial.  At  a  fixed  time  of  birth  it  is  brouglit 
down  from  its  celestial  abode  and  united  with  a  mortal  body, 
that  it  may  assert  and  prove  its  power  to  preside  over  and 
govern  that  body  according  to  the  eternal  laws  of  reason 
and  rectitude.  If  it  fulfills  this  high  duty,  when  the  fast- 
enings, which  have  bound  it  to  the  mortal  frame,  are  dis- 
solved with  the  dissolution  of  those  which  hold  together 
the  material  structure,  the  soul  flies  away  with  delight  to 
its  own  peculiar  star.  If  it  fails  in  this  high  duty,  it  is  on 
the  death  of  the  first  body  transferred  by  a  second  birth 
into  a  more  degraded  body,  resembling  that  to  which  it  has 
allowed  the  first  one  to  be  debased.  At  length,  somewhere 
in  the  series  of  transmigrations,  the  lower  and  bestial  tend- 
encies cease  to  have  power  over  the  immortal  soul;  the 
animal  with  which  it  was  last  united  remains  an  animal 
bereft  of  reason,  and  the  soul,  released  from  further  cap- 
tivity, escapes  to  its  original  abode  in  the  heavens,  more 
or  less  contaminated  by  what  it  has  undergone,  but  still 
immortal,  indestructible,  spiritual,  and  capable  of  purifi- 
cation. 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  conception  of  the  origin  and  na- 
ture of  the  human  soul  as  a  spiritual  existence,  quite  as  dis- 
tinctly presented  as  it  can  be  by  human  reason.  Stripped 
of  the  machinery  by  which  Plato  supposes  the  soul  to  have 
come  into  existence,  his  conception  of  its  origin  and  nature 
is  the  most  remarkable  contribution  which  philosophy,  apart 
from  the  aid  of  what  is  called  inspiration,  has  made  to  our 
means  of  speculating  upon  this  great  theme.  Of  course,  it 
affords,  with  all  the  machinery  of  which  Plato  makes  use, 
no  explanation  of  the  point  or  the  time  of  junction  between 
the  soul  and  the  body.  But,  as  a  conception  of  what  in 
the  poverty  of  language  must  be  called  the  substance  of  the 
soul,  of  its  spiritual  and  immortal  nature,  of  its  distinctive 
existence  separate  from  what  we  know  as  matter,  whether 
Plato  borrowed  more  or  less  from  other  philosophers  who 


78  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

preceded  him,  it  is  a  very  distinct  presentation  of  the  nature 
of  the  human  mind. 

Turn  now  to  what  can  be  extracted  from  the  Darwinian 
theory  of  the  origin  and  nature  of  the  human  mind,  and 
obserye  where  it  holds  with  and  where  it  breaks  from  the 
parallelism  between  it  and  the  Platonic  theory.  The  doc- 
trine of  evolution,  so  called,  presents  to  us  no  distinct  sug- 
gestion that  the  mind  of  man  is  a  separate  and  special  crea- 
tion. Kejecting,  and  very  properly  rejecting,  the  Platonic 
idea  of  an  existence  of  the  human  soul  anterior  to  the  birth 
of  the  individual,  the  Darwinian  theory  supposes  that  in 
the  long  course  of  time,  during  which  natural  and  sexual 
selection  were  operating  to  produce  higher  and  still  higher 
animals,  there  came  about,  in  the  earlier  and  primitive  or- 
ganizations, a  habit  of  the  animal  to  act  in  a  certain  way ; 
that  this  habit  descended  to  offspring  ;  that  it  became  de- 
veloped into  what  is  now  called  instinct ;  and  that  instinct 
became  developed  into  what  we  now  call  mind.  I  know 
not  how  otherwise  to  interpret  Mr.  Darwin's  repeated  affir- 
mations that,  in  comparing  the  mental  powers  of  man  and 
those  of  the  lower  animals,  there  can  be  detected  no  differ- 
ence in  kind,  but  that  the  difference  is  one  of  degree  only ; 
that  there  is  no  fundamental  difference,  or  difference  in 
nature,  between  the  mental  powers  of  an  ape  and  a  man,  or 
between  the  mental  power  of  one  of  the  lowest  fishes,  as  a 
lamprey  or  lancelet,  and  that  of  one  of  the  higher  apes ; 
that  both  of  these  intervals,  that  between  the  ape  and  man, 
and  that  between  the  lancelet  and  the  ape,  which  are  much 
wider  in  the  latter  case  than  in  the  former,  are  filled  up  by 
numberless  gradations.*  If  this  be  true,  it  must  be  be- 
cause the  lancelet,  supposing  that  animal  to  be  the  progeni- 
tor, formed  a  habit  of  acting  by  an  implanted  impulse, 
which  became,  under  the  operation  of  natural  and  sexual 

»  "  Descent  of  Man,"  p.  65. 


PAKALLEL  BETWEEN  PLATO  AND  DARWIN.      79 

selection,  confirmed,  developed,  and  increased  in  its  de- 
scendants, until  it  not  only  amounted  to  what  is  called  in- 
stinct, but  took  on  more  complex  habits  until  something 
akin  to  reason  was  developed.  As  the  higher  animals  con- 
tinued to  be  evolved  out  of  the  lower,  this  approach  to  a 
reasoning  power  became  in  the  ape  a  true  mental  faculty  ; 
and,  at  length,  in  the  numberless  gradations  of  structure 
intermediate  between  the  ape  and  the  man,  we  reach  those 
intellectual  faculties  which  distinguish  the  latter  by  an 
enormous  interval  from  all  the  other  animals.  "  If,"  says 
Mr.  Darwin,  "  no  organic  being,  excepting  man,  had  pos- 
sessed any  mental  power,  or  if  his  powers  had  been  of  a 
wholly  different  nature  from  those  of  the  lower  animals, 
then  we  never  should  have  been  able  to  convince  ourselves 
that  our  high  faculties  had  been  gradually  developed.  But 
it  can  be  shown  that  there  is  no  fundamental  difference  of 
this  kind."* 

I  will  not  here  ask  how  far  this  is  theoretical  assump- 
tion. I  shall  endeavor  to  examine  in  another  place  the  evi- 
dence which  is  supposed  to  show  that  the  mental  powers  of 
man  are  in  no  respect  fundamentally  different,  or  different 
in  kind,  from  the  powers  in  the  other  animals  to  which  the 
distinguished  naturalist  gives  the  name  of  "mental"  pow- 
ers. At  present  I  am  still  concerned  with  the  parallelism, 
between  the  Platonic  and  the  Darwinian  theory  ;  and  I 
again  ask  whether  the  latter  is  not  the  former  reversed,  in 
respect  to  the  process  by  which  reason  in  the  one  case  be- 
comes lost,  and  that  by  which  in  the  other  case  it  becomes 
developed  out  of  something  to  which  it  bears  no  resem- 
blance ?  Plato  supposes  the  creation  of  pure  reason,  or 
mental  power,  in  the  shape — to  use  the  counterpart  of  a 
physical  term — of  a  non-physical,  spiritual  intelligence,  or 
mind.     It  remains  always  of  this  nature,  but  the  successive 

*  "  Descent  of  Man,"  p.  65. 


80  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

animals  which  it  is  required  to  inhabit  on  earth  undergo 
such  degradations  that  the  immortal  reason  loses  in  them 
the  power  to  control  their  actions  ;  nothing  is  left  to  gov- 
ern in  them  but  mere  instinct,  and  this  at  last  sinks  into 
its  lowest  manifestations.  Darwin,  on  the  other  hand,  sup- 
poses the  first  creation  to  have  been  a  very  low  animal  of  a 
fish-like  structure,  with  the  lowest  capacity  for  voluntary 
action  of  any  kind,  but  impelled  to  act  in  a  certain  way  by 
superimposed  laws  of  self-preservation ;  that  in  the  infini- 
tude of  successive  generations  these  laws  have  operated  to 
produce  numberless  gradations  of  structure,  in  the  growth 
of  which  fixed  habits  have  become  complex  instincts  ;  that 
further  gradations  have  developed  these  instincts  into 
something  of  mental  power,  as  the  successive  higher  ani- 
mals have  become  evolved  out  of  the  lower  ones,  until  at 
length  the  intellect  of  man  has  been  ^'  gradually  developed  " 
by  a  purely  physical  process  of  the  action  of  organized 
matter. 

This  materialistic  way  of  accounting  for  the  origin  of 
the  human  mind  necessarily  excludes  the  idea  of  its  sepa- 
rate creation  or  its  distinctive  character.  The  theory  is  per- 
fectly consistent  with  itself,  in  supposing  that  the  mind  of 
man  does  not  differ  in  kind,  or  differ  fundamentally,  from 
those  exhibitions  which  in  the  lower  animals  lead  us  to  at- 
tribute to  them  some  mental  power.  But  whether  the  the- 
ory is  consistent  with  what  we  know  of  our  own  minds,  as 
compared  with  what  we  can  observe  in  the  other  animals, 
is  the  real  question.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  to  be  remem- 
bered that  we  can  read  our  own  minds,  by  the  power  of  con- 
sciousness and  reflection.  In  the  next  place,  it  is  conceded 
that  we  can  know  nothing  of  the  minds  of  the  other  ani- 
mals, excepting  by  their  outward  actions.  They  can  not 
speak,  to  tell  us  of  their  emotions,  their  memories,  their 
fears,  their  hopes,  their  desires,  what  they  think,  or  whether 
they  think  at  all.     They  do  acts  which  wonderfully  resem- 


DARWIN'S  ORIGIN  OF  MIND.  81 

ble  the  acts  of  man,  in  outward  appearance,  as  if  they  were 
acts  which  proceeded  from  the  same  power  of  reason  but  in 
a  less  perfect  degree  ;  yet  they  can  tell  us  nothing  of  their 
mental  processes,  if  they  have  such  processes,  and  the  ut- 
most that  we  can  do  is  to  argue  from  their  acts  that  they 
have  mental  faculties  akin  to  those  of  men.  It  is  in  the 
ordained  nature  of  things  that  we  know  and  can  know,  by 
introspection,  what  our  own  minds  are.  We  can  know  the 
mind  of  no  other  animal  excepting  from  his  outward  acts. 
How  far  these  will  justify  us  in  assuming  that  his  mind  is 
of  the  same  nature  as  ours,  or  that  ours  is  an  advanced  de- 
velopment of  his,  is  the  fundamental  question. 

Plato  was  evidently  led,  by  that  study  of  the  human 
mind  which  is  open  to  all  cultivated  intellects  through  the 
process  of  consciousness  and  reflection,  to  conceive  of  the 
soul  as  a  created  intelligence  of  a  spiritual  nature.  The 
fanciful  materials  out  of  which  he  supposes  it  to  have  been 
composed  were  the  mere  machinery  employed  to  express 
his  conception  of  its  spiritual  nature  and  its  indestructible 
existence.  He  was  led  to  employ  such  machinery  by  his 
highly  speculative  and  constructive  tendencies,  and  because 
it  was  the  habit  of  Greek  philosophy  to  account  for  every- 
thing. Some  machinery  he  was  irresistibly  impelled  to  em- 
ploy, in  order  to  give  due  consistency  to  his  theory.  But 
his  machinery  in  no  way  obscures  his  conception  of  the  na- 
ture of  the  soul,  and  we  may  disregard  it  altogether  and 
still  have  left  the  conception  of  a  spiritual  and  immortal 
being,  formed  for  separate  existence  from  matter,  but  united 
to  matter  for  a  temporary  purpose  of  discipline  and  trial. 

The  modern  naturalist,  on  the  other  hand,  although  as- 
suming the  existence  of  the  Omnipotent  God,  supposes  the 
human  mind  to  have  become  what  it  is  by  the  action  of 
organized  matter  beginning  at  the  lowest  point  of  animal 
life,  and  going  on  through  successive  gradations  of  animal 
structure,  until  habits  are  formed  which  become  instincts. 


82  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

and  instincts  are  gradually  developed  into  mind.  Take 
away  the  macliinery  that  is  employed,  and  you  have  left  no 
conception  of  the  immortal  and  indestructible  nature  of  the 
human  soul.  The  material  out  of  which  it  is  constructed 
is  all  of  the  earth  earthy,  and  the  twofold  question  arises  : 
first,  whether  this  was  the  probable  method  employed  by  the 
Omnipotent  Creator  ;  and,  secondly,  whether  it  will  account 
for  such  an  existence  as  we  have  reason  to  believe  the  mind 
of  man  to  be. 

There  is  another  point  in  the  parallel  between  the  Pla- 
tonic and  the  Darwinian  systems  which  is  worthy  of  note. 
We  have  seen  that,  according  to  Plato,  when  the  Demiurgus 
had  completed  the  construction  of  the  Kosmos  and  that  of 
the  human  soul,  he  retired  and  left  to  the  gods  the  construc- 
tion of  a  mortal  body  for  man  and  of  bodies  of  the  inferior 
animals  into  which  man  would  become  degraded.  Accord- 
ing to  Darwin,  the  Omnipotent  God  constructs  some  very 
low  form  of  animal,  and  then,  retiring  from  the  work  of 
direct  creation,  he  leaves  the  laws  of  natural  and  sexual 
selection  to  operate  in  the  production  of  higher  animals 
through  the  process  that  is  called  evolution.  Perhaps  it 
may  be  unscientific  to  ask  why  the  Omnipotent  God  should 
cease  to  exercise,  or  refrain  from  exercising,  his  power  of 
special  creation,  after  he  has  once  exerted  it.  Perhaps 
there  is  some  view  of  the  nature  and  purposes  of  that  infi- 
nite being  which  would  render  such  an  abstention  from 
his  powers  a  probable  occurrence.  But  it  is  difficult  to 
conceive  what  this  view  can  be.  If  we  take  a  comprehen- 
sive survey  of  all  the  facts  concerning  the  animal  kingdom 
that  are  within  the  reach  of  our  observation  ;  and  if,  then, 
in  cases  -where  we  know  of  no  intermediate  or  transitional 
states,  we  assume  that  they  must  have  existed  ;  if  we  array 
the  whole  in  support  of  a  certain  theory  which  undertakes  to 
account  both  for  what  we  see  and  for  what  we  do  not  see,  we 
very  easily  reach  the  conclusion  that  the  Omnipotent  God 


TRANSFORMATION  OF  ORGANS.  83 

performed  but  one  act  of  special  creation,  or  at  most  per- 
formed but  a  very  few  of  such  acts,  and  those  of  the  rudest 
and  simplest  tjrpes,  and  then  left  all  the  subsequent  and 
splendid  exhibitions  of  animal  structure  to  be  worked  out 
by  natural  selection.  This  is  the  scientific  method  adopted 
by  the  evolution  school  to  account  for  the  existence  of  all 
the  higher  animals  of  which  we  have  knowledge,  man  in- 
cluded. It  may  be  very  startling,  but  we  must  acknowl- 
edge it  as  the  method  of  action  of  the  Omnipotent  God,  be- 
cause it  is  said  there  is  no  logical  impossibility  in  it. 

There  is  a  passage  in  Mr.  Darwin's  "  Origin  of  Species  " 
which  I  must  now  quote,  because  it  shows  how  strongly 
the  supposed  action  and  abstention  of  the  infinite  Creator, 
according  to  the  Darwinian  theory,  resembles  the  action 
and  abstention  of  Plato's  Demiurgus  :  "  Although  the  be- 
lief that  an  organ  so  perfect  as  the  eye  could  have  been 
formed  by  natural  selection,  is  enough  to  stagger  any  one  ; 
yet  in  the  case  of  any  organ,  if  we  know  of  a  long  series  of 
gradations  in  complexity,  each  good  for  its  possessor  ;  then, 
under  changing  conditions  of  life,  there  is  no  logical  im- 
possibility in  the  acquirement  of  any  conceivable  degree  of 
perfection  through  natural  selection.  In  the  cases  in  which 
we  know  of  no  intermediate  or  transitional  states,  we 
should  be  extremely  cautious  in  concluding  that  none  can 
have  existed,  for  the  metamorphoses  of  many  organs  show 
what  wonderful  changes  in  function  are  at  least  possible. 
For  instance,  a  swim-bladder  has  apparently  been  converted 
into  an  air-breathing  lung.  The  same  organ  having  per- 
formed simultaneously  very  different  functions,  and  then 
having  been  in  part  or  in  whole  specialized  for  one  func- 
tion ;  and  two  distinct  organs  having  performed  at  the 
same  time  the  same  function,  the  one  having  been  perfected 
while  aided  by  the  other,  must  often  have  largely  facili- 
tated transitions." 

Here,  then,  we  have  it  propounded  that  after  the  creation 


84  CKEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

of  the  rudest  and  simplest  form  of  a  yistial  organ,  the  infi- 
nite God  abstains  from  direct  and  special  creation  of  such 
a  perfect  and  elaborate  organ  as  the  human  eye,  and  leaves 
it  to  be  worked  out  by  natural  selection  ;  there  being  no 
logical  impossibility,  it  is  said,  in  this  hypothesis.  We  are 
cautioned  not  to  conclude,  because  we  can  not  find  the  inter- 
mediate and  transitional  states  of  the  visual  organs,  that  they 
never  existed ;  we  are  told  that  they  are  at  least  possible, 
and  that  analogies  show  they  must  have  existed  ;  and  from 
the  possibility  of  their  existence  and  from  the  assumption 
that  they  happened,  we  are  to  believe  that  the  Omnipotent 
God,  refraining  from  the  exercise  of  his  power  to  create 
the  human  eye,  with  its  wondrously  perfect  structure,  left 
it  to  be  evolved  by  natural  selection  out  of  the  rudest  and 
simplest  visual  organ  which  he  directly  fashioned. 

All  things  are  possible  to  an  infinite  Creator.  He  who 
made  the  visual  organ  of  the  lowest  aquatic  creature  that 
ever  floated  could  make  the  human  eye  as  we  know  it,  or 
could  make  one  that  would  do  more  than  the  eye  of  man 
ever  was  capable  of.  He  could  by  a  direct  exercise  of  his 
power  of  creation  form  the  eye  of  man,  or  he  could  leave 
it  to  be  evolved  out  of  the  only  type  of  a  visual  organ  on 
which  he  saw  fit  to  exercise  his  creative  power.  He  could 
create  in  the  land-animals  a  true  air-breathing  lung  as  a 
special  production  of  his  will,  or  could  permit  it  to  be 
formed  by  transitional  gradations  out  of  the  swim-bladder 
of  an  aquatic  creature.  But  why  should  he  abstain  from 
the  one  method  and  employ  the  other  ?  This  question 
brings  us  at  once  to  the  probabilities  of  the  case  ;  and,  in 
estimating  those  probabilities,  we  must  take  into  the  ac- 
count all  that  reason  permits  us  to  believe  of  the  attributes 
of  the  Almighty.  We  can  not,  it  is  true,  penetrate  into  his 
counsels  without  the  aid  of  revelation.  But  if  we  confine 
ourselves  to  the  domain  of  science,  or  to  the  mere  observa- 
tion of  nature,  we  shall  find  reason  for  believing  that  the 


REASONS  FOR  SPECIAL  CREATIONS.  85 

Omnipotent  God  had  purposes  in  his  infinite  wisdom  that 
render  the  acts  of  special  creation  vastly  more  probable 
than  the  theory  of  evolution.  A  study  of  the  animal  king- 
dom and  of  all  the  phenomena  of  the  universe  leads  us 
rationally  and  inevitably  to  one  of  two  conclusions :  either 
that  there  is  no  God,  and  that  all  things  came  by  chance  ; 
or  to  the  belief  that  there  is  a  God,  and  that  he  is  a  being 
of  infinite  benevolence  as  well  as  infinite  wisdom  and 
power.  Now,  why  should  such  a  being,  proposing  to  him- 
self the  existence  on  earth  of  such  an  animal  as  man,  to  be 
inhabited  for  a  time  by  a  soul  destined  to  be  immortal, 
abstain  from  the  direct  creation  of  both  soul  and  body,  and 
leave  the  latter  to  be  evolved  out  of  the  lowest  form  of 
animal  life,  and  the  former  to  become  a  mere  manifestation 
or  exhibition  of  phenomena,  resulting  from  the  improved 
and  more  elaborate  structures  of  successive  types  of  ani- 
mals ?  Is  there  no  conceivable  reason  why  an  infinitely 
wise,  benevolent,  and  omnipotent  being  should  have  chosen 
to  exercise  the  direct  power  of  creation  in  forming  the  soul 
of  man  for  an  immortal  existence,  and  also  to  exercise  his 
direct  power  of  creation  in  so  fashioning  the  body  as  to  fit 
it  with  the  utmost  exactness  to  be  serviceable  and  subserv- 
ient to  the  mind  which  is  to  inhabit  it  for  a  season  ?  Why 
depict  the  infinite  God  as  a  quiescent  and  retired  spectator 
of  the  operation  of  certain  laws  which  he  has  imposed  upon 
organized  matter,  when  there  are  discoverable  so  many 
manifest  reasons  for  the  special  creation  of  such  a  being  as 
man  ?  It  is  hardly  in  accordance  with  any  rational  theory 
of  God's  providence,  after  we  have  attained  a  conception 
of  such  a  being,  to  liken  him  intentionally  or  uninten- 
tionally to  the  Demiurgus  of  the  acute  and  ingenious 
Greek  philosopher.  We  must  conclude  that  human  society, 
with  all  that  it  has  done  or  is  capable  of  doing  for  man  on 
earth,  was  in  the  contemplation  of  the  Almighty ;  and  if 
we  adopt  this  conclusion,  we  must  account  for  the  moral 


86  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

sense,  for  moral  obligation,  and  for  the  idea  of  law  and  duty. 
We  can  not  account  for  these  things  npon  any  probable 
theory  of  their  origin,  if  we  reject  the  idea  that  they  were 
specially  implanted  in  the  structure  of  the  human  soul,  and 
suppose  that  both  the  intellectual  faculties  and  the  moral 
sense  were  evolyed  out  of  the  struggle  of  lower  animals  for 
their  existence,  resulting  in  the  formation  of  higher  animals 
and  in  the  development  of  their  social  instincts  into  more 
complex,  refined,  and  consciously  calculating  instincts  of 
the  same  nature. 

I  have  not  drawn  this  parallel  between  the  Platonic  and 
the  Darwinian  theories  of  the  origin  of  different  animals 
for  any  purpose  of  suggesting  that  the  one  was  in  any  sense 
borrowed  from  the  other.  Plagiarism,  in  any  form,  is  not, 
so  far  as  I  know,  to  be  detected  in  the  writings  of  the  evo- 
lution school.  But  the  speculations  of  Plato  in  regard  to 
the  origin  and  nature  of  the  human  soul,  fanciful  as  they 
are,  afford  great  assistance  in  grasping  the  conception  of  a 
spiritual  existence  ;  and  the  parallel  between  his  process  of 
degradation  and  Darwin's  process  of  elevation  shows  to  my 
mind  as  great  probability  in  the  one  theory  as  there  is  in 
the  other. 


CHAPTER  III. 

The  Darwinian  pedigree  of  man — The  evolution  of  organisms  out  of  other 
organisms,  according  to  the  theory  of  Darwin. 

It  is  doubtless  an  interesting  speculation  to  go  back  in 
imagination  to  a  period  to  be  counted  by  any  number  of 
millions  of  years,  or  covered  by  an  immeasurable  lapse  of 
time,  and  to  conceive  of  slowly-moving  causes  by  wbich  the 
present  or  the  past  inhabitants  of  this  globe  became  de- 
veloped out  of  some  primordial  type,  through  successive 
generations,  resulting  in  different  species,  which  became 
final  products  and  distinct  organisms.  But  what  the  im- 
agination can  do  in  the  formation  of  a  theory  when  acting 
upon  a  certain  range  of  facts  is,  as  a  matter  of  belief,  to  be 
tested  by  the  inquiry  whether  the  weight  of  evidence  shows 
that  theory  to  be,  in  a  supreme  degree,  a  probable  truth, 
when  compared  with  any  other  hypothesis.  It  is  in  this 
way  that  I  propose  to  examine  and  test  the  Darwinian  pedi- 
gree of  man.  The  whole  of  Mr.  Darwin's  theory  of  the 
descent  of  man  as  an  animal  consists  in  assigning  to  him  a 
certain  pedigree,  which  traces  his  organism  through  a  long 
series  of  other  animals  back  to  the  lowest  and  crudest  form 
of  animal  life  ;  and  it  must  be  remembered  that  this  mode 
of  accounting  for  the  origin  of  man  of  necessity  supposes 
an  unbroken  connection  of  lives  with  lives,  back  through 
the  whole  series  of  organisms  which  constitute  the  pedi- 
gree, and  that,  according  to  the  Darwinian  theory,  there 
was  no  aboriginal  creation  of  any  of  these  organisms,  save 
the  very  first  and  lowest  form  with  which  the  series  com- 


88  CREATI02T  OR  EVOLUTION"? 

mences.  Not  only  must  this  connection  of  lives  with  lives 
be  shown,  but  the  theory  must  be  able  to  show  how  it  has 
come  about  that  there  are  now  distinct  species  of  animals 
which  never  reproduce  any  type  but  their  own. 

Two  great  agencies,  according  to  the  Darwinian  theory, 
have  operated  to  develop  the  different  species  of  animals 
from  some  low  primordial  type,  through  a  long  series  which 
has  culminated  in  man,  who  can  not  lay  claim  to  be  a  special 
creation,  but  must  trace  his  pedigree  to  some  ape-like  creat- 
ure, and  so  on  to  the  remote  progenitor  of  all  the  Vertehrata. 
It  is  now  needful  to  grasp,  with  as  much  precision  as  such 
a  theory  admits  of,  the  nature  and  operation  of  these  agen- 
cies, and  to  note  the  strength  or  weakness  of  the  proof 
which  they  afford  of  the  main  hypothesis.  First,  we  have 
what  is  called  **the  struggle  for  existence,"  which  may  be 
conceded  as  a  fact,  and  to  which  more  or  less  may  be  at- 
tributed. The  term  is  used  by  Mr.  Darwin  in  a  metaphori- 
cal sense,  to  include  all  that  any  being  has  to  encounter  in 
maintaining  its  individual  existence,  and  in  leaving  prog- 
eny, or  perpetuating  its  kind.  In  the  animal  kingdom, 
the  struggle  for  individual  existence  is  chiefly  a  struggle 
for  food  among  the  different  individuals  which  depend  on 
the  same  food,  or  against  a  dearth  of  one  kind  of  food 
which  compels  a  resort  to  some  other  kind.  The  struggle 
for  a  continuation  of  its  species  is  dependent  on  the  success 
with  which  the  individual  animal  maintains  the  contest  for 
its  own  existence.  Now,  it  is  argued  that  in  this  great  and 
complex  battle  for  life  it  would  occur  that  infinitely  varied 
diversities  of  structure  would  be  useful  to  the  animals  in 
helping  them  to  carry  on  the  battle  under  changing  con- 
ditions. These  useful  diversities,  consisting  of  the  devel- 
opment of  new  organs  and  powers,  would  be  preserved 
and  perpetuated  in  the  offspring,  through  many  successive 
generations,  while  the  variations  that  were  injurious  would 
be  rigidly  destroyed.     The  animals  in  whom  these  favor- 


BREEDING  OF  DOMESTIC  ANIMALS.  89 

able  individual  differences  and  variations  of  structure  were 
preserved  would  have  the  best  chance  of  surviving  and  of 
procreating  their  kind.  So  that,  by  this  "survival  of  the 
fittest,"  Nature  is  continually  selecting  those  variations  of 
structure  which  are  useful,  and  continually  rejecting  or 
eliminating  those  which  are  injurious  ;  the  result  being  the 
gradual  evolution  of  successive  higher  types  of  animals  out 
of  the  lower  ones,  until  we  reach  man,  the  highest  animal 
organism  that  exists  on  this  earth.  In  the  next  place,  we 
have,  as  an  auxiliary  agency,  in  aid  of  natural  selection,  what 
is  called  **  the  sexual  selection,"  by  which  the  best  endowed 
and  most  powerful  males  of  a  given  species  appropriate  the 
females,  and  thus  the  progeny  become  possessed  of  those 
variations  of  structure  and  the  superior  qualities  which  have 
given  to  the  male  parent  the  victory  over  his  competitors. 

The  proofs  that  are  relied  upon  to  establish  the  opera- 
tion and  effect  of  these  agencies  in  producing  the  results 
that  are  claimed  for  them,  ought  to  show  that,  in  one  or 
more  instances,  an  animal  of  a  superior  organization  which, 
when  left  to  the  natural  course  of  its  reproduction  by  the 
union  of  its  two  sexes,  always  produces  its  own  distinct 
type  and  no  other,  has,  in  fact,  been  itself  evolved  out  of 
some  lower  and  different  organism  by  the  agencies  of  natu- 
ral and  sexual  selection  operating  among  the  individuals  of 
that  lower  type.  One  of  the  proofs,  on  which  great  stress 
is  laid  by  Mr.  Darwin,  may  be  disposed  of  without  diflB- 
culty.  It  is  that  which  is  said  to  take  place  in  the  breed- 
ing of  domestic  animals,  or  of  animals  the  breeding  of  which 
man  undertakes  to  improve  for  his  own  practical  benefit, 
or  to  please  his  fancy,  or  to  try  experiments.  In  all  that 
has  been  done  in  this  kind  of  selection,  in  breeding  from 
the  best  specimens  of  any  class  of  animals,  there  is  not  one 
instance  of  the  production  of  an  animal  varying  from  its 
near  or  its  remote  known  progenitors  in  anything  but  ad- 
ventitious peculiarities  which  will  not  warrant  us  in  regard- 


90  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

ing  it  as  a  new  or  different  animal.  No  breeder  of  horses 
has  ever  produced  an  animal  that  was  not  a  horse.  He 
may  have  brought  about  great  and  important  improvements 
in  the  qualities  of  fleetness,  or  strength,  or  weight,  or  en- 
durance, by  careful  selection  of  the  sire  and  the  dam  ;  but 
the  race-horse  or  the  hunter,  or  the  draught-horse  or  the  war- 
horse,  is  but  a  horse  of  different  qualities  and  powers,  with 
the  same  skeleton,  viscera,  organs,  muscles,  which  mark 
this  species  of  animal,  and  with  no  other  variations  of 
structure  than  such  as  follow  from  the  limited  development 
of  different  parts  for  different  uses.  No  breeder  of  cows 
ever  produced  a  female  animal  that  was  not  a  cow,  although 
he  may  have  greatly  improved  the  quality  and  quantity  of 
the  milk  peculiar  to  this  animal  by  careful  selection  of  the 
individuals  which  he  permits  or  encourages  to  breed.  No 
breeder  of  sheep  ever  produced  an  animal  that  was  not  a 
sheep,  although  the  quality  of  the  fleece  or  of  the  mutton 
may  have  been  greatly  improved  or  varied.  Among  the 
domestic  fowls,  no  animal  that  was  not  a  bird  was  ever  bred 
by  any  crossing  of  breeds,  although  great  varieties  of  plum- 
age, structure  of  beak,  formation  of  foot,  development  of 
wing,  habits  of  life,  adaptation  to  changes  of  situation,  and 
many  minor  peculiarities,  have  been  the  consequences  of 
careful  and  intelligent  breeding  from  different  varieties  of 
the  same  fowl.  In  the  case  of  the  pigeon,  of  which  Mr. 
Darwin  has  given  a  great  many  curious  facts  from  his  own 
experience  as  a  breeder,  the  most  remarkable  variations  are 
perhaps  to  be  observed  as  the  results  of  intentional  breed- 
ing from  different  races  of  that  bird ;  but  with  all  these 
variations  nothing  that  was  not  a  bird  was  ever  produced. 
In  the  case  of  the  dog,  whatever  was  his  origin,  or  suppos- 
ing him  to  have  been  derived  from  the  wolf,  or  to  belong 
to  the  same  family  as  the  wolf,  it  is,  of  course,  impossible 
to  produce,  by  any  crossing  of  different  breeds  of  dogs,  an 
animal  that  would  not  belong  to  the  class  of  the  CanidcB, 


LIMITATIOI^S  TO  SELECTION.  91 

Indeed,  it  is  conceded  by  Darwin,  with  all  the  array  of 
facts  which  he  adduces  in  regard  to  the  domesticated  ani- 
mals, that  by  crossing  we  can  only  get  forms  in  some  de- 
gree intermediate  between  the  parents  ;  and  that  although 
a  race  may  be  modified  by  occasional  crosses,  if  aided  by 
careful  selection  of  the  individuals  which  present  the  de- 
sired character,  yet  to  obtain  a  race  intermediate  between 
two  distinct  races  would  be  very  difficult,  if  not  impossible. 
If  this  is  so,  how  much  more  remote  must  be  the  possibili- 
ty, by  any  selection,  or  by  any  crossing  to  which  Nature 
will  allow  the  different  animals  to  submit,  to  produce  an 
animal  of  so  distinct  a  type  that  it  would  amount  to  a  differ- 
ent species  from  its  known  progenitors  ! 

From  all  that  has  been  brought  about  in  the  efforts  of 
man  to  improve  or  to  vary  the  breeds  of  domestic  animals — 
a  kind  of  selection  that  is  supposed  to  be  analogous  to  what 
takes  place  in  Nature,  although  under  different  conditions 
— it  is  ajiparent  that  there  are  limitations  to  the  power  of 
selection  in  regard  to  the  effects  that  are  to  be  attributed  to 
it.  A  line  must  be  drawn  somewhere.  It  will  not  do  in 
scientific  reasoning,  or  in  any  other  reasoning,  to  ignore 
the  limitations  to  which  aU  experience  and  observation 
point  with  unerring  certainty,  so  far  as  experience  and  ob- 
servation furnish  us  with  facts.  It  is  true  that  the  lapse 
of  time  during  which  there  has  been,  with  more  or  less 
success,  an  intentional  improvement  in  the  breeds  of  do- 
mestic animals  carried  on  with  recorded  results  has  been 
very  short  when  compared  with  the  enormous  period  that 
has  elapsed  since  the  first  creation  of  an  animal  organiza- 
tion, whenever  or  whatever  that  creation  was.  But  history 
furnishes  us  with  a  pretty  long  stretch  of  time  through 
which  civilized,  half-civilized,  and  savage  nations  have  had 
to  do  with  various  animals  in  first  taming  them  from  a  wild 
state  and  then  in  domesticating  so  as  to  make  them  sub- 
servient to  human  wants,  and  finally  in  improving  their 


92  CEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

breeds.  But  there  is  no  recorded  or  known  instance  in 
which  there  has  been  produced  under  domestication  an  ani- 
mal which  can  be  said  to  be  of  a  different  species  from  its 
immediate  known  progenitors,  or  one  that  differed  from  its 
remote  known  progenitors  in  any  but  minor  and  adventi- 
tious peculiarities  of  structure.  If  in  passing  from  what 
has  been  done  by  human  selection  in  the  breeding  of  ani- 
mals to  what  has  taken  place  in  Nature  in  a  much  longer 
space  of  time  and  on  a  far  greater  scale,  we  find  that  in 
Nature,  too,  there  are  limitations  to  the  power  of  that 
agency  which  is  called  natural  selection — that  there  is  an 
impassable  barrier  which  Nature  never  crosses,  an  invin- 
cible division  between  the  different  species  of  animals — 
we  must  conclude  that  there  is  a  line  between  what  se- 
lection can  and  what  it  can  not  do.  We  must  conclude, 
with  all  the  scope  and  power  that  can  be  given  to  natu- 
ral selection,  that  Nature  has  not  developed  a  higher  and 
differently  organized  animal  out  of  a  lower  and  inferior 
type — has  not  made  new  species  by  the  process  called 
evolution,  because  the  infinite  God  has  not  commissioned 
Nature  to  do  that  thing,  but  has  reserved  it  unto  him- 
self to  make  special  creations.  Do  not  all  that  we  know 
of  the  animal  kingdom — all  that  naturalists  have  accu- 
mulated of  facts  and  all  that  they  concede  to  be  the  ab- 
sence of  facts — ^show  that  there  is  a  clear  and  well-defined 
limitation  to  the  power  of  natural  selection,  as  well  as  to 
the  power  of  that  other  agency  which  is  called  sexual  selec- 
tion ?  Grant  that  this  agency  of  natural  selection  began  to 
operate  at  a  period,  the  commencement  of  which  is  as  re- 
mote as  figures  can  describe  ;  that  the  struggle  for  life  be- 
gan as  soon  as  there  was  an  organized  being  existing  in 
numbers  sufficiently  large  to  be  out  of  proportion  to  the 
supply  of  food  ;  that  the  sexual  selection  began  at  the  same 
time,  and  that  both  together  have  been  operating  ever  since 
among  the  different  species  of  animals  that  have  success- 


DARWIN'S  PEDIGREE  OF  MAN.  93 

ively  arisen  and  successively  displaced  each  other  through- 
out the  earth.  The  longer  we  imagine  this  period  to  have 
been,  the  stronger  is  the  argument  against  the  theory  of 
evolution,  because  the  more  numerous  will  be  the  absences 
of  the  gradations  and  transitions  necessary  to  prove  an  un- 
broken descent  from  the  remote  prototype  which  is  assumed 
to  have  been  the  first  progenitor  of  the  whole  animal  king- 
dom. Upon  the  hypothesis  that  evolution  is  a  true  account 
of  the  origin  of  the  different  animals,  we  ought  practically 
to  find  no  missing  links  in  the  chain.  The  fact  is  that  the 
missing  links  are  both  extremely  numerous  and  important ; 
and  the  longer  the  period  assumed — ^the  further  we  get  from 
the  probability  that  these  two  agencies  of  natural  and  sexual 
selection  were  capable  of  producing  the  results  that  are 
claimed  for  them — the  stronger  is  the  proof  that  a  barrier 
has  been  set  to  their  operation,  and  the  more  necessary  is 
it  to  recognize  the  line  which  separates  what  they  can  from 
what  they  can  not  do. 

Let  us  now  see  what  is  the  state  of  the  proof.  It  may 
assist  the  reader  to  understand  the  Darwinian  pedigree  of 
man  if  I  present  it  in  a  tabulated  form,  such  as  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  use  in  exhibiting  to  the  eye  the  pedigree  of  a  single 
animal.  Stated  in  this  manner,  the  Darwinian  pedigree  of 
man  may  be  traced  as  follows  : 

L  A  marine  animal  of  the  maggot  form. 

II.  Group  of  lowlyorganized  fishes. 

m.  Ganoids  and  other  fishes. 

IV.  The  Amphibians. 

V.  The  ancient  Marsupials. 

VI,  The  Quadrumana  and  all  the  higher  mammals. 

VII.  The  Lemuridae. 

VHL  The  Simiadae. 

I 

I 


IX.  Old  World  Monkeys.    New  World  Monkeys. 
X.  Man. 


94  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

These  ten  classes  or  groups  of  animals  are  supposed  to 
be  connected  together  by  intermediate  diversified  forms, 
which  constitute  the  transitions  from  one  of  the  classes  or 
groups  to  the  other ;  and  in  reading  the  table  downward  it 
must  be  remembered  that  we  are  reading  in  fact  through 
an  ascending  scale  of  beings,  from  the  very  lowest  organized 
creature  to  the  highest.  The  whole,  taken  together,  forms 
a  chain  of  evidence  ;  and,  according  to  the  rational  rules  of 
evidence,  each  distinct  fact  ought  to  be  proved  to  have  ex- 
isted at  some  time  before  our  belief  in  the  main  hypothesis 
can  be  challenged.  I  know  of  no  reason  why  the  probable 
truth  of  a  scientific  hypothesis  should  be  judged  by  any 
other  rules  of  determination  than  those  which  are  applied 
to  any  other  subject  of  inquiry  ;  and,  while  I  am  ready  to 
concede  that  in  matters  of  physical  science  it  is  allowable 
to  employ  analogy  in  constructing  a  theory,  it  nevertheless 
remains,  and  must  remain,  true  that  where  there  are  nu- 
merous links  in  a  supposed  chain  of  proofs  that  are  estab- 
lished by  nothing  but  an  inference  drawn  from  an  analo- 
gous fact,  the  collection  of  supposed  proofs  does  not  ex- 
clude the  probable  truth  of  every  other  hypothesis  but  that 
which  is  sought  to  be  established,  as  it  also  does  not  estab- 
lish the  theory  in  favor  of  which  the  supposed  facts  are 
adduced.  Upon  these  principles  of  evidence  I  propose  now 
to  examine  the  Darwinian  pedigree  of  man. 

I.  The  group  of  marine  animals  described  as  resembling 
the  larvaB  of  existing  Ascidians  ;  that  is  to  say,  an  aquatic 
animal  in  the  form  of  a  grub,  caterpillar,  or  worm,  which  is 
the  first  condition  of  an  insect  at  its  issuing  from  the  egg. 
These  assumed  progenitors  of  the  Vertebrata  are  reached, 
according  to  Mr.  Darwin,  by  *'  an  obscure  glance  into  a 
remote  antiquity,"  and  they  are  described  as  *' apparently" 
existing,  and  as  *' resembling"  the  larvae  of  existing  Ascidi- 
ans. We  are  told  that  these  animals  were  provided  with 
branchiae,  or  gills,  for  respiration  in  water,  but  with  the 


DARWIN'S  PEDIGREE  OF  MAIT.  95 

most  important  organs  of  the  body,  sucli  as  the  brain  and 
heart,  imperfectly  or  not  at  all  developed.  This  simple 
and  crude  animal  "we  can  see,"  it  is  said,  '*in  the  dim 
obscurity  of  the  past,"  and  that  it  "must  have  been  the 
early  progenitor  of  all  the  Vertebrata. "  *  It  is  manifest 
that  this  creature  is  a  mere  hypothesis,  constructed,  no 
doubt,  by  the  aid  of  analogy,  but  existing  only  in  the  eye 
of  scientific  imagination.  Why  is  it  placed  in  the  water  ? 
For  no  reason,  apparently,  but  that  its  supposed  construc- 
tion is  made  to  resemble  that  of  some  creatures  which  have 
been  found  in  the  water,  and  because  it  was  necessary  to 
make  it  the  progenitor  of  the  next  group,  the  lowly-organ- 
ized fishes,  in  order  to  carry  out  the  theory  of  the  subse- 
quent derivations.  It  might  have  existed  on  the  land,  un- 
less at  the  period  of  its  assumed  existence  the  whole  globe 
was  covered  with  water.  If  it  had  existed  on  the  land,  the 
four  subsequent  forms,  up  to  and  including  the  Marsupials, 
might  have  been  varied  to  suit  the  exigencies  of  the  pedi- 
gree without  tracing  the  descent  of  the  Marsupials  through 
fishes  and  the  Amphibians. 

II.  The  group  of  lowly-organized  fishes.  These  are 
said  to  have  been  "probably"  derived  from  the  aquatic 
worm  (I),  and  they  are  described  to  have  been  as  lowly 
organized  as  the  lancelet,  which  is  a  known  fish  of  negative 
characters,  without  brain,  vertebral  column,  or  Jieart,  pre- 
senting some  affinities  with  the  Ascidians,  which  are  in- 
vertebrate, hermaphrodite  marine  creatures,  permanently 
attached  to  a  support,  and  consisting  of  a  simple,  tough, 
leathery  sack,  with  two  small  projecting  orifices.  The 
larvae  of  these  creatures  somewhat  resemble  tadpoles,  and 
have  the  power  of  swimming  freely  about.  These  larvae  of 
the  Ascidians  are  said  to  be,  in  their  manner  of  develop- 
ment, related  to  the  Vertebrata  in  the  relative  position  of 

*  "  Descent  of  Man,"  pp.  164,  609. 


96  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

the  nervous  system,  and  in  possessing  a  structure  closely 
like  the  chorda  dorsalis  of  vertebrate  animals.*  Here, 
again,  it  is  apparent  that  a  group  of  lowly-organized  fish- 
like animals,  of  which  there  are  no  remains,  have  been  con- 
structed by  a  process  of  scientific  reasoning  from  a  certain 
class  of  marine  creatures  that  are  known.  As  a  matter  of 
pure  theory,  there  can  be  no  serious  objection  to  this  kind 
of  construction,  especially  if  it  is  supported  by  strong  prob- 
abilities furnished  by  known  facts.  But  when  a  theory  re- 
quires this  kind  of  reasoning  in  order  to  establish  an  im- 
portant link  in  a  chain  of  proofs,  it  is  perfectly  legitimate 
and  necessary  criticism  that  we  are  called  upon  to  assume  the 
former  existence  of  such  a  link  ;  and,  indeed,  the  theorists 
themselves,  with  true  candor  and  accuracy,  tell  us  that  they 
are  arguing  upon  probabilities  from  the  known  to  the  un- 
known, or  that  a  thing  ''must  have  existed"  because  analo- 
gies warrant  the  assumption  that  it  did  exist.  In  a  matter 
so  interesting,  and  in  many  senses  important,  as  the  evolu- 
tion theory  of  man's  descent,  it  is  certainly  none  too  rigid  to 
insist  on  the  application  of  the  ordinary  rules  of  belief. 

III.  The  Ganoids  and  other  fishes  like  the  Lepidosiren, 
These,  we  are  told,  "must  have  been  developed"  from  the 
preceding  (II).  The  Ganoids,  it  is  said,  were  fishes  cov- 
ered with  peculiar  enameled  bony  scales.  Most  of  them 
are  said  to  be  extinct,  but  enough  is  known  about  them  to 
lay  the  foundation  for  their  ''probable"  development  from 
the  first  fishes  that  are  supposed  to  have  been  derived  from 
the  aquatic  worm  (I).  There  is  a  reason  for  arguing  the 
existence  of  these  first  fishes  as  a  true  fish  with  the  power 
of  locomotion,  because  the  next  ascending  group  of  animals 
is  to  be  the  Amphibians.  In  a  fish,  the  swim-bladder  is  an 
important  organ  ;  and  it  is  an  organ  that  plays  an  impor- 
tant part  in  the  Darwinian  theory,  furnishing,  it  is  claimed, 

*"Desc5ent  of  Man,"  p.  159. 


HOMOLOGOUS  ORGANS.  97 

a  very  remarkable  illustration  that  an  organ  constructed 
originally  for  one  purpose,  flotation,  may  be  converted  into 
one  for  a  widely  different  purpose,  namely,  respiration.  As 
the  Amphibians,  which  as  a  distinct  group  were  to  come 
next  after  the  fishes  in  the  order  of  development,  must  be 
furnished  with  a  true  air-breathing  lung,  their  progenitors, 
which  inhabited  the  water  only,  must  be  provided  with  an 
organ  that  would  undergo,  by  transitional  gradations,  con- 
version into  a  lung.  But  what  is  to  be  chiefly  noted  here 
is  that  it  is  admitted  that  the  prototype,  which  was  fur- 
nished with  a  swim-bladder,  was  "  an  ancient  and  unknown 
prototype  "  ;  and  it  is  a  mere  inference  that  the  true  lungs 
of  vertebrate  animals  are  the  swim-bladder  of  a  fish  so  con- 
verted, by  ordinary  generation,  from  the  unknown  proto- 
type because  the  swim-bladder  is  ** homologous  or  'ideally 
similar '  in  position  and  structure  with  the  lungs  of  the 
higher  vertebrate  animals."  *  One  might  ask  here  without 
presumption,  why  the  Omnipotent  God  should  not  have 
created  in  the  vertebrate  animals  a  lung  for  respiration,  as 
well  as  have  created  or  permitted  the  formation  of  a  swim- 
bladder  in  a  fish ;  and  looking  to  the  probabilities  of  the 
case,  it  is  altogether  too  strong  for  the  learned  naturalist  to 
assert  that  *' there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  the  swim- 
bladder  has  actually  been  converted  into  lungs  or  an  organ 
used  exclusively  for  respiration  "  ;  especially  as  we  are  fur- 
nished with  nothing  but  speculation  to  show  the  inter- 
mediate and  transitionary  modifications  between  the  swim- 
bladder  and  the  lung.  While  we  may  not  assume  "that 
the  Creator  works  by  intellectual  powers  like  those  of  man," 
in  all  respects,  it  is  surely  not  presumptuous  to  suppose  that 
an  Omnipotent  and  All-wise  Being  works  by  powers  that 
are  competent  to  produce  anything  that  in  his  infinite  pur- 
poses he  may  see  fit  specially  to  create. 

*  "  Origin  of  Species,"  p.  148. 


98  CKEATIO]^  OR  EVOLUTION? 

IV.  The  Amphibians.  Here  we  come  to  what  is  now 
a  yery  numerous  group,  of  which  it  is  said  that  the  first 
specimens  received,  among  other  modifications,  the  trans- 
formation of  the  swim-bladder  of  their  fish  progenitors  into 
an  air-breathing  lung.  We  are  told  that  from  the  fishes  of 
the  last  preceding  group  (III)  "  a  very  small  advance  would 
carry  us  on  to  the  Amphibians."  *  But  whether  the  ad- 
vance from  an  animal  living  in  the  water  and  incapable  of 
existing  out  of  that  element,  to  an  animal  capable  of  living 
on  the  land  as  well  as  in  the  water,  was  small  or  large,  we 
look  in  vain,  at  present,  for  the  facts  that  constitute  that 
advance. 

V.  The  Ancient  Marsupials.  These  were  an  order  of 
mammals  such  as  the  existing  kangaroos,  opossums,  etc., 
of  which  the  young,  born  in  a  very  incomplete  state  of  de- 
velopment, are  carried  by  the  mother,  while  sucking,  in  a 
ventral  pouch.  They  are  supposed  to  have  been  the  prede- 
cessors, at  an  earlier  geological  loeriod,  of  the  placental 
mammals,  namely,  the  highest  class  of  mammals,  in  which 
the  embryo,  after  it  has  attained  a  certain  stage,  is  united 
to  the  mother  by  a  vascular  connection  called  the  'placenta, 
which  secures  nourishment  that  enables  the  young  to  be 
born  in  a  more  complete  state.  There  is  a  third  and  still 
lower  division  of  the  great  mammalian  series,  called  the 
Montremata,  and  said  to  be  allied  to  the  Marsupials.  But 
the  early  progenitors  of  the  existing  Marsupials,  classed  as 
the  Ancient  Marsupials,  are  supposed  to  constitute  the 
connection  between  the  Amphibians  and  the  placental 
mammals ;  that  is  to  say,  an  animal  which  produced  its 
young  by  bringing  forth  an  ^^g,  from  which  the  young 
is  hatched,  became  converted  into  an  animal  which  pro- 
duced its  young  from  a  womb  and  nourished  it  after  birth 
from  the  milk  supplied  by  its  teats,  the  young  being  born 

*  "  Descent  of  Man,"  p.  165. 


DARWIN'S  PEDIGREE   OF  MAN.  99 

in  a  very  incomplete  state  of  development  and  carried  by 
the  mother  in  a  ventral  pouch  while  it  is  sucking.  The 
steps  of  variation  and  development  by  which  this  extraor- 
dinary change  of  structure,  of  modes  of  reproduction  and 
formation  of  organs,  as  well  as  habits  of  life,  took  place, 
are  certainly  not  yet  discovered  ;  and  it  is  admitted,  in  re- 
spect to  forms  ''now  so  utterly  unlike,"  that  the  production 
of  the  higher  forms  by  the  process  of  evolution  "  implies  the 
former  existence  of  links  binding  closely  together  all  these 
forms."  *  In  other  words,  we  are  called  upon  to  supply  by 
general  reasoning  links  of  which  we  have  as  yet  no  proof. 

VI.  The  Quadrumana  and  all  the  higher  (or  Placental) 
Mammals.  These  are  supposed  to  stand  between  the  im- 
placental  mammals  (V)  and  the  Lemuridae  (VII).  The 
latter  were  a  group  of  four-handed  animals,  distinct  from 
the  monkeys,  and  "resembling  the  insectivorous  quadru- 
peds." But  the  gradations  which  would  show  the  trans- 
formation from  the  implacental  Marsupials  to  the  placental 
Quadrumana  are  wanting. 

VII.  The  Lemuridas.  This  branch  of  the  placental 
mammals  is  now  actually  represented  by  only  a  few  va- 
rieties. The  early  progenitors  of  those  which  still  exist 
are  placed  by  Darwin  in  the  series  intermediate  between 
the  Quadrumana  and  the  Simiadas  ;  and  according  to  Hux- 
ley they  were  derived  from  the  lowest,  smallest,  and  least 
intelligent  of  the  placental  mammalia. 

VIII.  The  Simiadae.  This  is  the  general  term  given 
by  naturalists  to  the  whole  group  of  monkeys.  From  the 
LemuridaB  to  the  Simiadae  we  are  told  by  Darwin  that  *'the 
interval  is  not  very  wide."  Be  it  wider  or  narrower,  it 
would  be  satisfactory  to  know  whether  the  gradations  by 
which  the  former  became  the  latter  are  established  by  any- 
thing more  than  general  speculation. 

*  "  Descent  of  Man,"  p.  158. 


100  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

IX.  The  Catarrhine,  or  Old- World  Monkeys.  These 
are  the  great  stem  or  branch  of  the  Simiadae  which  became 
the  progenitors  of  man.  His  immediate  progenitors  were 
"  probably "  a  group  of  monkeys  called  by  naturalists  the 
Anthropomorphous  Apes,  being  a  group  without  tails  or 
callosities,  and  in  other  respects  resembling  man.  While 
this  origin  of  man  is  gravely  put  forward  and  maintained 
with  much  ingenuity,  we  are  told  that  **  we  must  not  fall 
into  the  error  of  supposing  that  the  early  progenitor  of  the 
whole  Simian  stock,  including  man,  was  identical  with,  or 
even  closely  resembled,  any  existing  ape  or  monkey."  *  So 
that  somewhere  between  the  early  progenitor  of  the  whole 
Simian  stock  and  all  that  we  know  of  the  monkey  tribe, 
there  were  transitions  and  gradations  and  modifications 
produced  by  natural  and  sexual  selection  which  we  must 
supply  as  well  as  we  can. 

X.  Man.  We  have  now  arrived  at  '^  the  wonder  and 
glory  of  the  universe,"  and  have  traced  his  pedigree  from  a 
low  form  of  animal,  in  the  shape  of  an  aquatic  worm, 
through  successive  higher  forms,  each  developed  out  of  its 
predecessor  by  the  operation  of  fixed  laws,  and  without  the 
intervention  of  any  special  act  of  creation  anywhere  in  the 
series,  whatever  may  have  been  the  power  and  purpose  by 
and  for  which  existence  was  given  to  the  first  organized 
and  living  creature,  the  aquatic  worm.  Speaking  of  man 
as  belonging,  from  a  genealogical  point  of  view,  to  the  Ca- 
tarrhine,  or  Old- World  stock  of  monkeys,  Mr.  Darwin  ob- 
serves that  "we  must  conclude,  however  much  the  con- 
clusion may  revolt  our  pride,  that  our  early  progenitors 
would  have  been  properly  thus  designated."  f 

I  have  already  said  that  our  pride  may  be  wholly  laid 
out  of  consideration.  The  question  of  the  probable  truth 
of  this  hypothesis  of  man's  descent  should  not  be  affected 

*  "  Descent  of  Man,"  p.  155.  f  Ibid. 


PROBABILITY  THE  SOLE  QUESTION.  IQl 

by  anything  but  correct  reasoning  and  the  application  of 
proper  principles  of  belief.  Treating  it  with  absolute  in- 
difference in  regard  to  the  dignity  of  our  race,  I  shall  re- 
quest my  readers  to  examine  the  argument  by  which  it  is 
supported,  without  the  smallest  influence  of  prejudice.  I 
am  aware  that  it  is  asking  a  good  deal  to  desire  the  reader 
to  divest  himself  of  all  that  nature  and  education  and  his- 
tory and  poetry  and  religion  have  contributed  to  produce 
in  our  feelings  respecting  our  rank  in  the  scale  of  being. 
When  I  come  to  treat  of  that  which,  for  want  of  a  more 
suitable  term,  must  be  called  the  substance  of  the  human 
mind,  and  to  suggest  how  it  bears  upon  this  question  of  the 
origin  of  man,  I  shall,  as  I  trust,  give  the  true,  and  no 
more  than  the  true,  scope  to  those  considerations  which 
lead  to  the  comparative  dignity  of  the  race.  But  this  dig- 
nity, as  I  have  before  observed,  should  follow  and  should 
not  precede  or  accompany  the  discussion  of  the  scientific 
problem. 

What  has  chiefly  struck  me  in  studying  the  theory  of 
evolution  as  an  account  of  the  origin  of  man  is  the  extent 
to  which  the  theory  itself  has  influenced  the  array  of  proofs, 
the  inconsequential  character  of  the  reasoning,  and  the 
amount  of  assumption  which  marks  the  whole  argument. 
This  is  not  said  with  any  purpose  of  giving  offense.  What 
is  meant  by  it  will  be  fully  explained  and  justified,  and  one 
of  the  chief  means  for  its  justification  will  be  found  in  what 
I  have  here  more  than  once  adverted  to  —  Mr.  Darwin's 
own  candor  and  accuracy  in  pointing  out  the  particulars  in 
which  important  proofs  are  wanting.  Another  thing  by 
which  I  have  been  much  impressed  has  been  the  repetition 
of  what  is  "probable,"  without  a  sufficient  weighing  of  the 
opposite  probability ;  and  sometimes  this  reliance  on  the 
"  probable  "  has  been  carried  to  the  verge,  and  even  beyond 
the  verge,  of  all  probability.  Doubtless  the  whole  question 
of  special  creations  on  the  one  hand  and  of  gradual  evo- 


102  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

lution  on  the  other  is  a  question  of  probability.  But  I 
now  refer  to  a  habit  among  naturalists  of  asserting  the 
probability  of  a  fact  or  an  occurrence,  and  then,  without 
proof,  placing  that  fact  or  occurrence  in  a  chain  of  evidence 
from  which  the  truth  of  their  main  hypothesis  is  to  be  in- 
ferred. It  is  creditable  to  them  as  witnesses,  that  they  tell 
us  that  the  particular  fact  or  occurrence  is  only  probably 
true,  and  that  we  are  to  look  for  proof  of  it  hereafter.  But 
the  whole  theory  thus  becomes  an  expectant  one.  We  are 
to  give  up  our  belief  that  God  made  man  in  his  own  image 
— that  he  fashioned  our  minds  and  bodies  after  an  image 
which  he  had  conceived  in  his  infinite  wisdom — because  we 
are  to  expect  at  some  future  time  to  discover  the  proof  that 
he  did  something  very  different ;  that  he  formed  some  very 
lowly-organized  creature,  and  then  sat  as  a  retired  spectator 
of  the  struggle  for  existence,  through  which  another  and 
then  another  higher  form  of  being  would  be  evolved,  until 
the  mind  and  the  body  of  man  would  both  have  grown  out 
of  the  successive  developments  of  organic  structure.  We 
can  not  see  this  now ;  we  can  not  prove  it ;  but  we  may 
exjoect  to  be  able  to  see  it  and  to  prove  it  hereafter. 

(The  present  state  of  the  argument  does  not  fur- 
nish very  strong  grounds  for  the  expectation  of  what  the 
future  is  to  show.  As  far  as  I  can  discover,  the  main 
ground  on  which  the  principle  of  evolution  is  accepted  by 
those  who  believe  in  it,  is  general  reasoning.  It  is  ad- 
mitted that  there  are  breaks  in  the  organic  chain  between 
man  and  his  nearest  supposed  allies  which  can  not  be  bridged 
over  by  any  extinct  or  living  species.  The  answer  that  is 
made  to  this  objection  seems  to  me  a  very  singular  speci- 
men of  reasoning.  It  is  said  that  the  objection  will  not 
appear  of  much  weight  to  those  who  believe  in  the  prin- 
ciple of  evolution  from  general  reasons.  But  how  is  it  with 
those  who  are  inquiring,  and  who,  failing  to  feel  the  force 
of  the  ''general  reasons,"  seek  to  know  what  the  facts  are  ? 


WHAT  THE  FUTURE  IS  TO  SHOW.  103 

When  we  are  told  that  the  breaks  in  the  organic  chain 
"depend  merely  on  the  number  of  related  forms  which 
have  become  extinct,"  is  it  asking  too  much  to  inquire  how 
it  is  known  that  there  were  such  forms  and  that  they  have 
become  extinct  ?  Geology,  it  is  fully  conceded  on  its  high- 
est authorities,  affords  us  very  little  aid  in  arriving  at  these 
extinct  forms  which  would  connect  man  with  his  ape-like 
progenitors ;  for,  according  to  Lyell,  the  discovery  of  fossil 
remains  of  all  the  vertebrate  classes  has  been  a  very  slow 
and  fortuitous  process,  and  this  process  has  as  yet  reached 
no  remains  connecting  man  with  some  extinct  ape-like 
creature.*  The  regions  where  such  remains  would  be  most 
likely  to  be  found  have  not  yet  been  searched  by  geolo- 
gists. This  shows  the  expectant  character  of  the  theory, 
and  how  much  remains  for  the  future  in  supplying  the 
facts  which  are  to  take  the  place  of  "general  reasons." 

But  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  part  of  the  argument 
remains  to  be  stated.  The  breaks  in  the  organic  chain  of 
man's  supposed  descent  are  admitted  to  be  of  frequent  oc- 
currence in  all  parts  of  the  series,  "some  being  wide,  sharp, 
and  defined,  others  less  so  in  various  degrees."  f  But  these 
breaks  depend  merely,  it  is  said,  upon  the  number  of  related 
forms  that  have  become  extinct,  there  being  as  yet  no  proof, 
even  by  fossil  remains,  that  they  once  existed.  Now,  the 
prediction  is  that  at  some  future  time  such  breaks  will  be 
found  still  more  numerous  and  wider,  by  a  process  of  ex- 
tinction that  will  be  observed  and  recorded ;  and  hence  we 
are  not  to  be  disturbed,  in  looking  back  into  the  past,  by 
finding  breaks  that  can  not  be  filled  by  anything  but  gen- 
eral reasoning.  The  passage  in  which  this  singular  kind 
of  reasoning  is  expressed  by  Mr.  Darwin  deserves  to  be 
quoted : 

"At  some  future  period,  not  very  distant  as  measured 

*  "  Descent  of  Man,"  pp.  156,  157.  f  Ibid.,  p.  156. 


104  CREATIOIT  OR  EVOLUTION"? 

by  centuries,  tlie  civilized  races  of  man  will  almost  cer- 
tainly exterminate  and  replace  the  sayage  races  throughout 
the  world.  At  the  same  time  the  anthropomorphous  apes, 
as  Prof.  Schaafhausen  has  remarked,  will  no  doubt  be 
exterminated.  The  break  between  man  and  his  nearest 
allies  will  then  be  wider,  for  it  will  interyene  between  man 
in  a  more  civilized  state,  as  we  may  hope,  even  than  the 
Caucasian,  and  some  ape  as  low  as  the  baboon,  instead  of 
as  now  between  the  negro  or  Australian  and  the  gorilla."* 
I  do  not  quite  comprehend  how  the  *^more  civilized 
state  of  man  "  in  the  more  or  less  remote  future  is  to  lead 
to  this  wider  break.  One  can  understand  how  the  whole  of 
mankind  may  become  more  civilized,  and  how  the  savage 
races  will  disappear  by  extermination  or  otherwise.  It  may 
be,  and  probably  will  be,  that  the  anthropomorphous  apes 
will  be  exterminated  at  the  same  time.  But  the  question 
here  is  not  in  regard  to  a  more  perfect  and  widely  diffused 
civilization — a  higher  and  universal  elevation  of  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  condition  of  mankind,  a  more  improved 
physical  and  moral  well-being — ^but  it  is  in  regard  to  a 
change  in  the  physical  and  organic  structure  of  the  human 
animal,  so  marked  and  pronounced  as  to  produce  a  wider 
break  between  man  and  his  nearest  supposed  allies  than  that 
which  now  exists  between  the  negro  or  the  Australian  and 
the  gorilla.  The  anthropomorphous  ape  existing  now  will 
have  disappeared  ;  but  it  will  be  a  well-known  and  recorded 
animal  of  the  past.  But  what  reason  is  there  to  expect  that 
natural  and  sexual  selection,  or  the  advance  of  civilization, 
or  the  extermination  of  the  savage  races  of  mankind,  or  all 
such  causes  combined,  are  going  to  change  essentially  the 
structure  of  the  human  body  to  something  superior  to  or 
fundamentally  different  from  the  Caucasian  individual  ? 
"We  have  had  a  tolerably  long  recorded  history  of  the  human 

*  "  Descent  of  Man,"  p.  156. 


HISTORIC  AND  PRE-HISTORIC  MAN.  105 

body  as  it  has  existed  in  all  states  of  civilization  or  barba- 
rism. And  although,  in  the  progress  from  barbarism  to  civil- 
ization— if  utter  barbarism  preceded  civilization — the  devel- 
opment of  its  parts  has  been  varied,  and  the  brain  especially 
has  undergone  a  large  increase  in  volume  and  in  the  activity 
of  its  functions,  we  do  not  find  that  the  plan  on  which  the 
human  animal  was  constructed,  however  we  may  suppose 
him  to  have  originated,  has  undergone  any  material  change. 
The  most  splendid  specimen  of  the  Caucasian  race  that 
the  civilized  world  can  show  to-day  has  no  more  organs, 
bones,  muscles,  arteries,  veins,  or  nerves  than  those  which 
are  found  in  the  lowest  savage.  He  makes  a  different  use 
of  them,  and  that  use  has  changed  their  development,  and 
to  some  extent  has  modified  stature,  physical,  intellectual, 
and  moral,  and  many  other  attributes ;  as  climate  and 
habits  of  life  have  modified  complexion,  the  diseases  to 
which  the  human  frame  is  liable,  and  many  other  peculiari- 
ties. But  if  we  take  historic  man,  we  find  that  in  all  the 
physical  features  of  his  animal  construction  that  constitute 
him  a  species,  he  has  been  essentially  the  same  animal  in  all 
states  of  civilization  or  barbarism  ;  and  unless  we  boldly 
assume  that  the  prehistoric  man  was  an  animal  bom  with  a 
coat  of  hair  all  over  his  body,  and  that  clothing  was  re- 
sorted to  as  the  hair  in  successive  generations  disappeared, 
we  can  have  no  very  strong  reason  for  believing  that  the 
human  body  has  been  at  any  time  an  essentially  different 
structure  from  what  it  is  now.  Even  in  regard  to  longevi- 
ty or  power  of  continued  life,  if  we  set  aside  the  exceptional 
cases  of  what  is  related  of  the  patriarchs  in  the  biblical 
records,  we  do  not  find  that  the  average  duration  of  hu- 
man life  has  been  much  greater  or  much  less  than  the 
threescore  and  ten  or  the  fourscore  years  that  are  said  to 
have  been  the  divinely  appointed  term.  As  to  what  may 
have  been  the  average  duration  of  life  among  prehistoric 
men,  we  are  altogether  in  the  dark. 


106  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

I  must  now  revert  to  one  of  the  most  prominent  of  the 
admitted  breaks  in  the  Darwinian  pedigree,  namely,  that 
which  occurs  at  the  supposed  transition  from  the  amphibi- 
ans to  the  mammalia.  There  is  a  term  which  is  used  in 
mechanics  to  mark  the  characteristic  and  fundamental  dis- 
tinction between  one  complex  machine  and  another.  We 
speak  of  the  "principle"  on  which  a  mechanical  structure 
operates,  meaning  the  essential  construction  and  mode  of 
operation  which  distinguish  it  from  other  machines  of  the 
same  general  class.  Although  we  are  not  to  forget  that 
an  animal  organization,  to  which  is  given  that  mysterious 
essence  that  is  called  life,  may  come  into  being  by  very 
different  processes  from  those  which  are  employed  by  man 
in  dealing  with  dead  matter  and  the  forces  which  reside  in 
it,  yet  there  is  no  danger  of  being  misled  into  false  analo- 
gies, if  we  borrow  from  mechanics  a  convenient  term,  and 
speak  of  the  "principle  "  on  which  an  animal  is  constructed 
and  on  which  its  animal  organization  operates.  We  find, 
then,  that  in  the  animal  kingdom  there  is  a  perfectly  clear 
and  pronounced  division  between  the  modes  in  which  the 
reproductive  system  is  constructed  and  by  which  it  oper- 
ates in  the  continuation  of  the  species.  The  principle  of 
construction  and  operation  of  the  reproductive  system, 
by  which  an  individual  animal  is  produced  from  an  egg 
brought  forth  by  the  female  parent,  and  is  thereafter  nour- 
ished without  anything  derived  from  the  parental  body,  is 
as  widely  different  from  that  by  which  the  young  animal 
is  born  from  a  womb  and  nourished  for  a  time  from  the 
milk  of  the  mother,  as  any  two  constructions,  animate  or 
inanimate,  that  can  be  conceived  of.  Whatever  may  be  the 
analogy  or  resemblance  between  the  embryo  that  is  in  the 
egg  of  one  animal  and  the  embryo  that  remains  in  the  womb 
of  another  animal,  at  the  point  at  which  the  egg  is  expelled 
from  the  parental  system  the  analogy  or  resemblance  ceases. 
In  certain  animals  a  body  that  is  called  an  egg  is  formed 


INTRODUCTION  OF  THE  PLACENTA.     107 

in  the  female  parent,  containing  an  embryo,  or  foetus,  of 
the  same  species,  or  the  substance  from  which  a  like  animal 
is  produced.  This  substance  is  inclosed  in  an  air-tight  ves- 
sel or  shell ;  when  this  has  been  expelled  from  the  parent 
the  growth  of  the  embryo  goes  on  to  the  stage  of  deyelop- 
ment  at  which  the  young  animal  is  to  emerge  from  the  in- 
closure,  and,  whatever  may  have  been  the  process  or  means 
of  nourishment  surrounding  the  embryo  within  the  shell 
and  brought  in  that  inclosure  from  the  body  of  the  parent, 
the  young  animal  never  derives,  at  any  subsequent  stage  of 
its  existence,  either  before  or  after  it  has  left  the  shell,  any- 
thing more  from  the  parental  system.  It  may  be  "hatched " 
by  parental  incubation  or  by  heat  from  another  source,  but 
for  nourishment,  after  it  leaves  the  shell,  the  young  animal 
is  dependent  on  substances  that  are  not  supplied  from  the 
parental  body,  although  they  may  be  gathered  or  put  within 
its  reach  by  the  parental  care. 

The  transition  from  this  system  of  reproduction  to  that 
by  which  the  foetus  is  formed  into  a  greater  or  less  degree 
of  development  within  the  body  of  the  parent,  and  then 
brought  forth  to  be  nourished  into  further  development  by 
the  parental  milk,  is  enormous.  The  principle  of  the  or- 
ganic construction  and  mode  of  perpetuating  the  species, 
in  the  two  cases,  is  absolutely  unlike  after  we  pass  the  point 
at  which  the  ovule  is  formed  by  the  union  of  the  male  and 
the  female  vesicles  that  are  supposed  to  constitute  its  sub- 
stance. When  we  pass  from  the  implacental  to  the  pla- 
cental mammals  we  arrive  at  the  crowning  distinction  be- 
tween the  two  great  systems  of  reproduction  which  separates 
them  by  a  line  that  seems  to  forbid  the  idea  that  the  one 
has  grown  out  of  the  other  by  such  causes  as  natural  selec- 
tion, and  without  a  special  and  intentional  creation  of  a 
new  and  different  mode  of  operation.  On  the  one  hand, 
we  have  a  system  of  reproduction  by  which  the  ovule  is 
brought  forth  from  the  body  of  the  parent  in  an  inclosed 


108  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

vessel,  and  thereafter  derives  nothing  from  the  parental 
body.  In  the  other,  we  have  the  ovule  developed  into  the 
foetus  within  the  body  of  the  parent,  and  the  young  animal 
is  then  brought  forth  in  a  more  or  less  complete  state  of 
development,  to  be  nourished  by  the  parental  secretion 
called  milk.  The  intervention  of  the  placental  connection 
between  the  foetus  and  the  mother,  whereby  nourishment 
is  kept  up  so  that  the  young  animal  may  be  born  in  a  more 
complete  state  of  development,  is  a  contrivance  of  marvel- 
ous skill,  which  natural  selection,  or  anything  that  can  be 
supposed  to  take  place  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  or  the 
result  of  the  sexual  battle,  seems  to  be  entirely  inadequate 
to  account  for.  If  two  such  very  diverse  systems  could  be 
supposed  to  have  been  the  product  of  human  contrivance, 
we  should  not  hesitate  to  say  that  the  principle  of  the  one 
was  entirely  different  from  that  of  the  other,  and  that  the 
change  evinced  the  highest  constructive  skill  and  a  special 
design. 

The  Darwinian  hypothesis  is  that  this  great  transition 
from  the  one  system  of  reproduction  to  the  other  took  place 
between  the  amphibians  and  the  ancient  marsupials,  by 
the  operation  of  the  influences  of  natural  and  sexual  selec- 
tion. That  is  to  say,  the  system  of  reproduction  through 
an  eggy  which  is  the  characteristic  of  the  amphibians, 
became  changed  by  gradations  and  modifications  into  the 
system  of  the  lowest  mammals,  the  distinction  between 
the  former  and  the  latter  being  an  obvious  and  palpable 
one.  Then  we  are  to  suppose  a  further  change  from 
the  marsupials,  or  the  implacental  mammals,  to  that  won- 
derful contrivance,  the  placenta,  by  which  the  mother 
nourishes  the  foetus  into  a  more  complete  state  of  develop- 
ment before  the  young  animal  is  born.  This  enormous 
change  of  system  is  supposed  to  have  been  brought  about 
by  a  struggle  among  the  individuals  of  one  species  for  food, 
aided  by  a  struggle  between  the  males  of  that  species  for 


COMPAPwISON  OF  MAN  WITH  OTHER  MAMMALS.  109 

the  possession  of  the  females,  by  the  growth  and  develop- 
ment of  organs  useful  to  the  animal  in  the  two  battles,  and 
by  the  transmission  of  these  enhanced  powers  and  improved 
weapons  to  offspring,  and  possibly  by  the  crossing  of  differ- 
ent varieties  of  the  new  animals  thus  produced.  But  what 
potency  there  could  be  in  such  causes  to  bring  about  this 
great  change  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  imagine,  and  we 
must  draw  largely  on  our  imaginations  to  reach  it.  It 
would  seem  that  if  there  is  any  one  part  of  animal  economy 
that  is  beyond  the  influence  of  such  causes  as  the  '^  survival 
of  the  fittest,"  it  is  the  reproductive  system,  by  which  the 
great  divisions  of  the  animal  kingdom  continue  their  re- 
spective forms.  Give  all  the  play  that  you  can  to  the  opera- 
tion of  the  successful  battle  for  individual  life,  and  to  the 
victory  of  the  best-appointed  males  over  their  competitors 
for  the  possession  of  the  females,  and  to  the  transmission 
of  acquired  peculiarities  to  offspring — when  you  come  to 
such  a  change  as  that  between  the  two  systems  of  repro- 
duction and  perpetuation,  you  have  to  account  for  some- 
thing which  needs  far  more  proof  of  the  transitional  grada- 
tions of  structure  and  habits  of  life  than  can  now  be  found 
between  the  highest  of  the  amphibians  and  the  lowest  of 
the  mammalia.  I  know  not  how  there  could  be  higher  or 
stronger  evidence  of  design,  of  a  specially  planned  and  in- 
tentionally elaborated  construction,  than  is  afforded  by  this 
great  interval  between  the  one  reproductive  system  and  the 
other.  But  it  is  time  now  to  pass  to  those  points  of  re- 
semblance between  man  and  the  other  mammals  which  are 
asserted  as  the  decisive  proofs  of  his  and  their  descent  from 
some  pre-existing  form,  their  common  progenitor.  These 
points  of  resemblance  may  be  considered  in  the  following 
order : 

1.  The  Bodily  Structure  of  Man.^Ue  is  notoriously 
constructed  on  the  same  general  type  or  model  as  other 
mammals.     "All  the  bones  in  his  skeleton  can  be  com- 


110  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

pared  with  corresponding  bones  in  a  monkey,  bat,  or  seal. 
So  it  is  with  his  muscles,  nerves,  blood-vessels,  and  internal 
viscera.  The  brain,  the  most  important  of  all  the  organs, 
follows  the  same  law."  * 

2.  The  Liability  of  Man  to  certain  Diseases  to  which 
the  Lower  Animals  are  liable, — These  diseases,  such  as  hy- 
drophobia, variola,  the  glanders,  syphilis,  cholera,  etc.,  man 
both  communicates  to  and  receives  from  some  of  the  lower 
animals.  "This  fact  proves  the  close  similarity  of  their 
tissues  and  blood,  both  in  minute  structure  and  composi- 
tion, far  more  plainly  than  does  their  comparison  under 
the  best  microscope  or  by  the  aid  of  the  best  chemical  analy- 
sis." Monkeys  are  liable  to  many  of  the  same  non-conta- 
gious diseases  as  we  are,  such  as  catarrh  and  consumption. 
They  suffer  from  apoplexy,  inflammation  of  the  bowels,  and 
cataract  in  the  eye.  Their  young  die  from  fever  when  shed- 
ding their  milk-teeth.  Medicines  produce  the  same  effect 
on  them  as  on  us,  and  they  have  a  strong  taste  for  tea,  cof- 
fee, spirituous  liquors,  and  even  tobacco.  Man  is  infested 
with  both  internal  and  external  parasites  of  the  same  genera 
or  families  as  those  infesting  other  mammals ;  in  the  case  of 
scabies,  he  is  infested  with  the  same  species  of  parasites. 
He  is  subject  to  the  same  law  of  lunar  periods,  in  the 
process  of  gestation,  and  in  the  maturation  and  duration 
of  certain  diseases.  His  wounds  are  repaired  by  the  same 
process  of  healing,  and,  after  the  amputation  of  his  limbs, 
the  stumps  occasionally  possess  some  power  of  regenera- 
tion, as  in  the  lowest  animals,  f 

3.  The  Reproductive  Process. — This  is  strikingly  the 
same,  it  is  said,  in  all  mammals,  from  the  first  act  of  court- 
ship by  the  male  to  the  birth  and  nurturing  of  the  young.  J 
The  closeness  of  the  parallel  here,  however,  is  obviously 
between  man  and  the  other  placental  mammalia,  if  we  re- 

*  "  Descent  of  Man,"  p.  6.  f  Ibid.,  p.  8.  %  Ibid 


COMPARISON  OF  MAN  WITH  OTHER  MAMMALS.  lU 

gard  the  whole  process  of  reproduction  of  the  different 
species. 

4.  Embryonic  Development. — From  the  human  ovule, 
which  is  said  to  differ  in  no  respect  from  the  ovule  of  other 
animals,  into  and  through  the  early  embryonic  period,  we 
are  told  that  the  embryo  of  man  can  hardly  be  distin- 
guished from  that  of  other  members  of  the  vertebrate  king- 
dom. It  is  not  necessary  to  repeat  the  details  of  the  resem- 
blance, which  are  undoubtedly  striking,  because  they  show 
a  remarkable  similarity  between  the  embryo  of  man  and 
that  of  the  dog  and  the  ape,  in  the  earlier  stage  of  the 
development,  and  that  it  is  not  until  quite  in  the  later 
stages  of  development  that  the  three  depart  from  each 
other,  the  difference  between  the  young  human  being  and 
the  ape  being  not  so  great  as  that  between  the  ape  and  the 
dog.  We  may,  of  course,  accept  Prof.  Huxley^s  testimony 
that  **the  mode  of  origin  [conception?]  and  the  early 
stages  of  the  development  of  man  are  identical  with  those 
of  the  animals  immediately  below  him  in  the  scale  ;  with- 
out a  doubt,  in  these  respects,  he  is  far  nearer  to  the  apes 
than  the  apes  are  to  the  dog."  * 

5.  Rudiments, — This  is  a  somewhat  obscure  branch  of 
the  proofs,  which  requires  a  more  detailed  examination  in 
order  to  appreciate  its  bearing  on  the  general  theory  of  evo- 
lution. A  distinction  is  made  between  rudimentary  and 
nascent  organs.  The  former  are  absolutely  useless  to  their 
possessor — such  as  the  mammae  of  male  quadrupeds,  or  the 
incisor  teeth  of  ruminants,  which  never  cut  through  the 
gums — or  else  they  are  of  such  slight  service  to  their  pres- 
ent possessors  that  they  can  not  be  supposed  to  have  been 
developed  under  the  conditions  which  now  exist.  These 
useless,  or  very  slightly  useful,  organs  in  the  human  frame, 
are  supposed  to  have  been  organs  which  had  an  important 

*  "Descent  of  Man,"  pp.  9,  10,  quoting  Huxley,  "Man's  Place  in  Na- 
ture," p.  65.  * 


112  CKEATIOK  OR  EVOLUTIOl!^? 

utility  in  the  lower  animals  from  which  man  is  descended, 
but,  by  disuse  at  that  period  of  life  when  the  organ  is 
chiefly  used,  and  by  inheritance  at  a  corresponding  period 
of  life,  they  became  of  less  and  less  utility  in  the  succes- 
sive animals  that  were  evolved  out  of  the  preceding  forms, 
until  they  sank  into  the  condition  of  useless  appendages, 
although  perpetuated  by  force  of  the  derivation  of  one 
species  of  animal  from  another,  caused  by  the  operation  of 
the  laws  of  natural  and  sexual  selection.  Nascent  organs, 
on  the  other  hand,  are  those  which,  though  not  fully  de- 
veloped to  their  entire  capability,  are  of  high  service  to 
their  possessor,  and  may  be  carried  to  a  higher  degree  of 
utility.  One  of  the  characteristics,  as  it  is  said,  of  rudi- 
mentary organs,  is  that  they  often  become  wholly  sup- 
pressed in  individuals,  and  then  reappear  occasionally  in 
other  individuals,  through  what  is  called  reversion,  or  a 
return  to  ancestral  peculiarities.*  We  are  told  that  "not 
one  of  the  higher  animals  can  be  named  which  does  not 
bear  some  part  in  a  rudimentary  condition  ;  and  man  forms 
no  exception  to  the  rule."  f 

Among  the  rudiments  that  are  peculiar  to  man,  and 
which  are  supposed  to  be  proofs  of  his  cognate  relations  to 
the  lower  animals,  we  are  referred  to  certain  muscles  in  a 
reduced  condition,  which  in  the  other  animals  are  used  to 
move,  twitch,  or  contract  the  skin,  and  remnants  of  which, 
in  an  efficient  state,  are  found  in  various  parts  of  our 
bodies  ;  for  instance,  the  muscles  which  raise  the  eyebrows, 
those  which  contract  the  scalp,  those  which,  in  some  indi- 
viduals, move  the  external  ear,  and  similar  muscular  powers 
in  different  parts  of  the  body.  These  are  adduced  as  illus- 
trations of  the  persistent  transmission  of  an  absolutely  use- 
less, or  almost  useless,  faculty,  "  probably "  derived  from 
our  remote  semi-human  progenitors.    There  is  also  another 

*  "  Descent  of  Man,"  p.  11  e<  seq.  f  Ibid. 


COMPARISON  OF  MAN  WITH  OTHER  MAMMALS.  113 

rudiment  in  man,  found  in  the  covering  of  the  eye,  and 
called  by  anatomists  the  "  semi-lunar  fold,"  which  in  birds 
is  of  great  functional  importance,  as  it  can  be  rapidly  drawn 
across  the  whole  eyeball.  In  those  animals  in  which,  with  its 
accessory  muscles  and  other  structures,  it  is  well  developed, 
as  in  some  reptiles  and  amphibians,  and  in  sharks,  it  is  a 
third  eyelid.  In  the  two  lower  divisions  of  the  mammalian 
series,  the  monotremata  and  the  marsupials,  and  in  some 
few  of  the  higher  mammals,  as  in  the  walrus,  it  is  said  to  be 
fairly  well  developed.  But  in  man,  in  the  quadrumana, 
and  most  other  mammals,  it  has  become  a  mere  rudiment. 

The  sense  of  smell  in  man  is  also  classed  by  Darwin  and 
other  naturalists  among  the  rudiments.  It  is  argued  that 
it  was  not  originally  acquired  by  man  as  he  now  exists,  but 
that  he  has  inherited  this  power,  in  an  enfeebled  and  so 
far  rudimentary  condition,  from  some  early  progenitor,  to 
whom  it  was  highly  serviceable,  and  by  whom  it  was  con- 
tinually used. 

Then  we  have  the  rudiment  of  hair,  which,  so  far  as  it 
now  exists  on  different  parts  of  our  body,  is  regarded  as  a 
mere  remnant  of  the  uniform  hairy  coat  of  the  lower  ani- 
mals. Man,  as  he  is  now  born,  "differs  conspicuously 
from  all  the  other  primates  in  being  almost  naked."  But 
this  nearly  nude  condition  was  not,  it  is  said,  the  condition 
of  his  progenitors,  and  it  is  not  the  condition  of  his  co- 
descendants  from  the  same  progenitors.  At  some  time  the 
progenitors  of  man  and  his  co-descendants  became  covered 
all  over  with  a  coat  of  hair.  What  remains  upon  our  bodies 
of  this  peculiar  growth,  that  is  called  hair,  is  what  was  left 
after  the  agency  of  natural  selection  had  worked  off  what 
was  useless  to  the  successive  animals,  and  sexual  selection 
had  operated  to  transmit  to  offspring  the  absence  of  hair 
that  had  accrued  in  the  nearer  progenitors  and  the  imme- 
diate parents.  The  illustrations  which  render  this  view 
*'  probable  "  do  not  need  to  be  repeated,  nor  is  it  necessary 


114  CREATIOIlT  OR  EVOLUTION? 

to  follow  out  the  speculations  coDcerning  the  mode  in 
which  our  progenitors,  near  or  remote,  became  yaried  in 
respect  to  the  quantity,  position,  or  direction  of  the  hairs 
on  various  parts  of  their  bodies. 

There  are  several  other  alleged  homologues  or  rudiments 
which  are  supposed  to  connect  man  with  the  lower  animals, 
but  which,  whatever  may  be  the  resemblances,  it  is  not 
necessary  to  discuss  in  detail,  because  there  is  one  consid- 
eration at  least  which  applies  to  the  whole  of  this  class  of 
proofs,  and  to  that  I  now  pass.  The  three  great  classes  of 
facts  on  which  the  whole  argument  rests,  viewing  man  as 
an  animal  and  omitting  all  reference  to  his  intellect,  are 
the  resemblances  of  his  bodily  structure  to  that  of  the  other 
mammals,  the  similarity  between  his  embryonic  develop- 
ment and  theirs,  and  the  rudiments.  I  reserve  for  separate 
discussion  the  counter-proof  which  may  be  derived  from 
the  nature  of  the  human  mind,  and  the  special  adaptation 
of  the  human  structure  to  become  the  temporary  residence 
and  instrument  of  a  spiritual  and  immortal  being. 

"  It  is,"  says  Mr.  Darwin,  "  no  scientific  explanation  to 
assert  that  they  have  all  [man  and  the  other  animals  of  the 
mammalian  class]  been  formed  on  the  same  ideal  plan."* 
The  similarity  of  pattern  is  pronounced  '*  utterly  inexplica- 
ble "  upon  any  other  hypothesis  than  that  all  these  animals 
are  descended  from  a  common  progenitor,  and  that  they 
have  become  what  they  are  by  subsequent  adaptation  to 
diversified  conditions.  I  may  incur  some  risk  in  under- 
taking to  suggest  what  is  a  "  scientific  '^  explanation.  Cer- 
tainly I  do  not  propose  to  ^'assert"  anything.  But  I  will 
endeavor  to  keep  within  the  bounds  of  what  I  suppose  to 
be  science.  I  take  that  to  be  a  scientific  explanation 
which,  embracing  the  important  facts  of  natural  history 

*  "  Descent  of  Man,"  p.  24.  Consult  Mr.  Darwin's  note  on  Prof.  Bian- 
coni's  explanation  of  homologous  structures  upon  mechanical  principles, 
in  accordance  with  their  uses. 


ESSENTIAL  POSTULATE  OF  A  CREATOR.        115 

as  the  groundwork  of  the  reasoning,  undertakes  to  show 
the  rationality  of  one  hypothesis  that  differs  from  another, 
when  the  question  is.  Which  has  the  greater  amount  of 
probability  in  its  favor  ? 

All  correct  reasoning  on  this  subject  of  man's  descent 
as  an  animal  begins,  I  presume,  with  the  postulate  of  an 
Infinite  Creator,  having  under  his  power  all  the  elements 
and  forms  of  matter,  organized  and  unorganized,  animate 
and  inanimate.  There  is  no  fundamental  difference  of 
opinion  on  this  point,  as  I  understand,  between  some  of 
the  evolutionists  and  their  opponents.*  Omnipotence, 
boundless  choice  of  means  and  ends,  illimitable  wisdom,  a 
benevolence  that  can  not  fail  and  can  not  err,  are  the  con- 
ceded attributes  of  the  being  who  is  supposed  to  preside 
over  the  universe  ;  and,  however  difficult  it  may  be  for  us 
to  express  a  conception  of  infinite  power  and  infinite  wis- 
dom, as  it  is  to  describe  infinite  space  and  duration,  we 
know  what  we  mean  to  assume  when  we  speak  or  think  of 
faculties  that  are  without  limit,  and  of  moral  qualities  that 
are  subject  to  no  imperfection.  It  is  true  that  we  have  no 
means  of  forming  an  idea  of  superhuman  and  infinite 
power  but  by  a  comparison  of  our  own  limited  faculties 
with  those  which  we  assume  to  belong  to  an  eternal  and 
infinite  God.  But  the  nature  of  our  own  limited  powers 
teaches  us  that  there  may  be  powers  that  are  as  far  above 
ours  as  the  heavens  are  above  the  earth,  as  the  endless 
realms  of  space  stretch  beyond  and  forever  beyond  any 
measurable  distance,  as  eternity  stretches  beyond  and  for- 
ever beyond  all  measurable  time.  At  all  events,  the  postu- 
late of  an  infinite  God  is  the  one  common  starting-point  for 
the  scientists  of  the  evolution  school  and  those  who  accept 
their  doctrine,  and  for  those  who  dissent  from  it.  If  I  did 
not  assume  this,  I  could  not  go  one  step  further,  for  with- 

*  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's  peculiar  views  are  not  here  included  in  the  dis- 
cussion, but  they  will  be  considered  hereafter. 


116  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

out  it  there  could  not  be  a  basis  for  any  reasoning  on  the 
subject  that  would  lead  anywhere  but  to  the  conclusion  that 
all  that  exists  came  by  blind  chance.  This  conclusion  is 
rejected  alike  by  the  scientists,  whose  views  I  am  now  ex- 
amining, and  by  those  who  differ  from  them. 

In  the  economy  of  Nature,  which  is  but  another  term 
for  the  economy  of  the  Omnipotent  Creator,  there  is  no 
waste  of  power,  as  there  is  no  abstention  from  the  exercise 
of  power,  where  its  exertions  are  needed  to  accomplish  an 
end.  By  this  I  mean  that  when  a  general  plan  of  construc- 
tion is  found  carried  out  through  a  variety  of  organizations, 
the  rational  inference  is  that  so  much  power  has  been  ex- 
erted as  was  needful  to  accomplish  in  each  organization  the 
objects  that  are  common  to  all  of  them,  and  that  no  more 
power  has  been  used  in  that  direction.  But  where  a  special 
adaptation  in  some  one  variety  of  the  same  class  of  con- 
structions is  needful  to  accomplish  an  object  peculiar  to  a 
new  variety,  the  necessary  amount  of  power  never  fails  to 
be  exerted.  A  study  of  the  animal  kingdom  reveals  this 
great  truth,  as  palpably  as  a  study  of  the  products  of 
human  skill  reveals  the  fact  that  man,  from  the  imperfec- 
tion of  his  faculties,  is  constantly  exerting  more  or  less 
power  than  was  needful  in  his  efforts  to  produce  a  new 
variety  in  his  mechanical  constructions.  Experience  and 
accumulated  knowledge  enable  us  to  carry  a  general  plan 
of  constrviction  through  a  considerable  group  of  mechanical 
forms  ;  but  it  is  when  we  endeavor  to  vary  the  principle  of 
construction  so  as  to  produce  a  new  and  special  mode  of 
operation,  that  we  either  waste  power  in  repeating  the 
general  plan  or  fail  to  exercise  the  amount  of  power  neces- 
sary to  adapt  the  general  plan  to  the  introduction  of  the 
special  object  at  which  we  are  aiming.  Our  success  in 
making  such  adaptations  is  often  wonderful,  but  our  fail- 
ures evince  that  our  imperfect  faculties  do  not  always  en- 
able us  to  accomplish  the  necessary  adaptations  of  the  gen- 


ESSENTIAL  POSTULATE  OF  A  CREATOR.        117 

eral  plan  of  coustruction  to  the  special  objects  which  we 
wish  to  attain.  To  the  Infinite  Creator,  all  such  difficul- 
ties are  unknown.  He  neither  wastes  power  by  new  plans 
that  are  unnecessary,  nor  makes  **vain  repetitions,"  nor 
fails  to  exert  the  requisite  amount  of  power  and  wisdom  in 
the  introduction  of  new  and  special  contrivances  which  he 
ingrafts  upon  or  superadds  to  the  general  plan,  and  which 
he  has  devised  for  the  accomplishment  of  a  new  object. 
With  a  boundless  choice  of  means  and  ends,  with  a  skill 
that  can  not  err,  with  a  prescience  that  sees  the  end  from 
the  first  conception  of  the  design,  he  can  repeat  the  general 
plan  throughout  any  variety  of  constructions  without  any 
waste  of  power,  and  can  introduce  the  new  adaptations  or 
contrivances  which  are  to  constitute  a  new  construction, 
by  the  exercise  of  all  the  power  that  is  required  to  accom- 
plish a  special  object.  Whether  we  are  to  suppose  that  he 
does  this  by  the  establishment  of  certain  laws  wfiich  he 
leaves  to  operate  within  prescribed  limits,  or  does  it  by 
special  creations  proceeding  from  direct  and  specific  exer- 
tions of  his  will,  the  question  of  his  power  to  employ  the 
one  method  or  the  other  remains  always  the  same.  The 
question  of  which  was  his  probable  method  depends  upon  the 
force  of  evidence ;  and  upon  this  question  we  must  allow 
great  weight  to  the  fact  which  all  Nature  discloses,  namely, 
that  the  Creator  does  not  waste  power  by  making  new  plans 
of  construction  where  an  existing  plan  may  be  usefully  re- 
peated, and  that  he  does  not  fail  to  exercise  the  necessary 
power  when  he  wishes  to  add  to  the  general  plan  of  construc- 
tion a  new  and  special  organism  for  a  particular  puqiose. 

Is  there  anything  presumptuous  in  thus  speaking  of  the 
determination  and  purposes  of  the  Omnipotent  Creator  ? 
We  have  his  existence  and  infinite  attributes  conceded  as 
the  basis  of  all  sound  reasoning  on  his  works.  Why  then 
should  we  not  infer  his  purposes  and  his  acts  from  his 
works  ?    Why  should  we  not  attribute  to  him  a  special 


118  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

design,  when  we  can  not  examine  his  works  without  infer- 
ring such  special  design,  unless  we  conclude  that  the  most 
amazing  and  peculiar  constructions  grew  up  under  the 
operation  of  causes  of  which  we  have  no  sufficient  proof, 
and  in  the  supposed  result  of  which  there  are  admitted 
chasms  that  can  not  be  bridged  over  ? 

To  return  now  to  the  resemblance  between  the  bodily 
structure  of  man  and  that  of  his  supposed  progenitors. 
The  assertion  is  that  a  repetition  of  the  same  general  plan 
of  construction  throughout  a  class  of  animals  can  only  be 
explained  upon  the  hypothesis  of  their  descent  from  a  com- 
mon progenitor.  They  are,  it  is  claimed,  co-descendants 
from  some  one  ancient  animal ;  and  however  they  may 
differ  from  each  other,  in  all  these  co-descendants  from 
that  animal  we  find  the  same  general  plan  of  construction, 
the  same  ideal  model  repeated.  Among  the  whole  class  of 
the  higher  mammals,  we  have  skeletons,  muscles,  nerves, 
blood-vessels,  internal  viscera,  organs,  that  closely  corre- 
spond. What  does  this  prove  but  that  there  was  no  waste 
of  power,  because  there  was  no  necessity  in  making  man, 
for  the  formation  of  a  general  plan  of  construction  differ- 
ent in  these  particulars  from  that  which  was  employed  in 
making  the  monkey,  the  bat,  or  the  seal  ?  The  similarity 
of  pattern  between  the  hand  of  a  man  or  a  monkey,  the 
foot  of  a  horse,  the  flipper  of  a  seal,  or  the  wing  of  a  bat, 
is  pronounced  '* utterly  inexplicable"  upon  any  hypothesis 
but  that  of  descent  from  a  common  progenitor.  But  why 
is  not  this  sameness  of  ideal  plan  just  as  consistent  with 
the  hypothesis  that  the  same  ideal  plan  would  answer  for 
the  human  hand  or  the  hand  of  an  ape,  the  foot  of  the 
horse,  the  flipper  of  the  seal,  or  the  wing  of  the  bat  ?  *    It 

*  It  is  immaterial,  of  course,  in  this  discussion,  whether  the  formation 
of  man  preceded  that  of  the  other  animals,  according  to  the  Platonic  idea, 
or  whether,  as  in  the  account  given  in  the  book  of  Genesis,  the  other  ani- 
mals were  first  formed.     So  far  as  an  ideal  plan  entered  into  all  of  them, 


UNIFORMITY  OF  PLAK  119 

is  wlien  you  pass  from  such  resemblances  and  come  to  the 
special  contrivances  which  separate  one  animal  from  an- 
other by  a  broad  line  of  demarkation,  that  you  are  to  look 
for  the  adaptation  of  special  contrivances  to  repetitions  of 
the  same  ideal  model  through  the  varying  species.  Take, 
for  example,  the  introduction  among  the  mammals  of  the 
placental  system  of  reproduction,  parturition,  and  subse- 
quent nourishment  of  the  young,  combined  with  the  nour- 
ishment of  the  foetus  while  it  continues  in  the  body  of  the 
mother.  This  system  would  require  no  material  variation 
from  the  general  plan  of  construction  that  is  common  to 
the  different  mammals  of  this  class  in  respect  to  the  parts 
where  the  resemblances  are  kept  up  throughout  the  series, 
such  as  those  of  the  skeleton,  muscles,  nerves,  viscera,  and 
other  organs  that  are  found  in  all  of  them.  But  for  the 
introduction  of  this  peculiar  system  of  reproduction  and 
continuation  of  the  species,  there  was  needful  a  special  and 
most  extraordinary  contrivance.  If  such  a  contrivance  or 
anything  like  it  had  been  produced  by  human  skill,  and 
been  introduced  into  a  mechanical  structure,  we  should 
not  hesitate  to  say  that  there  had  been  an  invention  of  a 
most  special  character.  When  you  follow  this  system 
through  the  different  animals  in  which  it  is  found  operating, 
and  find  that  the  period  of  gestation  and  of  suckling  is 
varied  for  each  of  them,  that  for  each  there  is  the  necessary 
modification  of  trunk,  situation  of  the  organs,  assimilation 
of  food  and  formation  of  milk,  and  many  other  peculiari- 
ties, what  are  you  to  conclude  but  that  there  has  been  an 
adaptation  of  a  new  system  to  a  general  plan  of  construction, 
and  that  while  the  latter  remains  substantially  the  same,  it 
has  had  ingrafted  upon  or  incorporated  with  it  a  most  singu- 
lar contrivance,  so  original,  comprehensive,  and  flexible, 
that  its  characteristic  principle  admits  of  the  most  exact 

that  plan  may  have  been  devised  for  and  first  applied  to  any  part  of  the 
series,  and  then  varied  accordingly. 


120  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

working  in  animals  that  are  as  far  asunder  as  man  and 
the  horse,  or  as  the  horse  and  the  seal,  or  as  the  seal  and 
the  bat? 

The  resemblances  between  the  embryonic  deyelopment 
of  man  and  the  other  mammals  present  another  instance  of 
the  constantly  occurring  fact  that  there  has  been  no  waste 
of  power  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  no  failure  to 
exert  the  amount  of  power  requisite  to  produce  a  new 
yariation  of  the  general  principle.  There  is  no  more  logi- 
cal force  in  the  hypothesis  of  a  common  progenitor,  in 
order  to  account  for  these  resemblances,  than  there  is  in 
the  hypothesis  that  the  general  system  of  embryonic  de- 
velopment was  first  devised,  and  that  it  was  then  varied  in 
each  distinct  animal  according  to  the  requirements  of  its 
special  construction.  Upon  the  latter  supposition,  there 
would  be  resemblances  to  a  certain  stage,  and  then  there 
would  follow  the  departures  which  we  have  no  difiiculty  in 
tracing.  Upon  the  former  supposition  we  should  expect 
to  find,  what  we  actually  do  find,  that  it  is  very  difficult,  if 
not  impossible,  to  assign  any  reason  for  the  departures,  or 
to  suggest  how  it  has  happened  that  one  animal  is  so  abso- 
lutely distinct  from  another.  Thus,  to  begin  with  the 
embryo  itself,  and  to  trace  it  through  its  stages  of  develop- 
ment, we  find  that  in  man  it  can  hardly  be  distinguished 
from  that  of  other  members  of  the  vertebrate  kingdom. 
This  we  should  expect  to  be  the  case  after  we  have  learned 
the  great  fact  that  Nature  operates  upon  a  uniform  princi- 
ple up  to  the  point  where  variations  and  departures  are  to 
supervene.  The  system  of  embryonic  development  being 
devised  to  operate  in  parallel  lines  through  all  the  placental 
mammals  until  the  lines  should  begin  to  depart  from  each 
other  so  as  to  result  in  animals  of  different  species,  would 
necessarily  show  strong  resemblances  of  structure  until  the 
departures  supervened.  There  would  be,  in  other  words,  a 
strong  illustration  of  the  truth  that  in  the  Divine  economy 


EMBRYONIC  DEVELOPMENT.  121 

there  is  no  waste  of  power.  But  when  the  stage  is  reached 
at  which  the  departures  may  be  noted,  and  the  lines  diverge 
into  the  production  of  organized  beings  differing  widely 
from  each  other,  we  reach  an  equally  striking  illustration 
of  the  corresponding  truth  that  the  amount  of  power  neces- 
sary to  produce  very  different  results  never  fails  to  be  put 
forth.  There  is  no  good  reason  why  this  latter  exertion  of 
power  should  not  be  attributed  to  special  design  just  as 
logically  and  rationally  as  we  must  attribute  to  intentional 
purpose  and  infinite  skill  the  general  system  of  embryonic 
development  which  has  been  made  for  the  whole  class  of 
the  placental  mammals.  While,  therefore,  we  may  accept 
as  a  fact  Prof.  Huxley's  statement  on  this  branch  of  com- 
parative anatomy,  we  are  under  no  necessity  to  accept 
his  conclusion.  To  the  question  whether  man  originates 
in  a  different  way  from  a  dog,  bird,  frog,  or  fish,  this 
anatomist  answers,  as  already  quoted  :  "  The  reply  is  not 
doubtful  for  a  moment ;  without  question,  the  mode  of 
origin  and  the  early  stages  of  the  development  of  man 
are  identical  with  those  of  the  animals'  immediately  below 
him  in  the  scale  ;  without  a  doubt,  in  these  respects  he  is 
far  nearer  to  apes  than  apes  are  to  the  dog."  This  refers, 
of  course,  to  the  parallelism  that  obtains  in  the  early  stages 
of  the  embryonic  development.  It  necessarily  implies,  at 
later  stages,  diverging  lines,  which  depart  more  or  less 
from  each  other,  and  thus  we  liave  between  the  ape  and 
the  man  a  nearer  approach  than  we  have  between  the  ape 
and  the  dog.  But  how  does  this  displace,  or  tend  to  dis- 
place, the  hypothesis  of  a  general  system  of  embryonic  de- 
velopment for  all  animals  of  a  certain  class,  and  an  inten- 
tional and  special  variation  of  that  system  so  as  to  produce 
different  species  of  animals  ?  The  identity  between  the 
mode  of  origin  and  the  early  stages  of  the  development  of 
man  and  those  of  the  animals  immediately  below  him  in 
the  scale,  is  strong  proof  of  the  applicability  of  the  same 


122  CREATIOIlT  OR  EVOLUTIOIT? 

general  principle  of  development  throughout  all  the  ani- 
mals of  a  certain  class.  The  cessation  of  the  parallelism  at 
the  diverging  lines  is  equally  strong  proof  of  a  design  to 
create  an  animal  differing  as  man  does  from  the  ape,  or  as 
the  ape  does  from  the  dog.  The  argument  that  these 
three  species  are  co-descendants  from  a  common  progenitor, 
viewing  man  simply  as  an  animal,  is  at  least  no  stronger 
than  the  argument  which  leads  to  the  conclusion  of  special 
creations. 

The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  the  liability  of  man  to 
certain  contagious  or  non-contagious  diseases  in  common 
with  some  of  the  lower  animals.  That  there  is  a  similarity 
in  the  chemical  composition  of  the  blood  of  an  entire  class 
of  animals,  in  the  structure  of  their  tissues  and  blood- 
vessels, so  that  they  are  subject  to  the  same  causes  of  in- 
flammation or  to  the  same  parasites,  is  proof  of  a  uniform 
plan  of  the  fluids  and  the  vascular  system,  or,  in  other 
words,  it  evinces  that  here,  too,  there  has  been  in  these 
respects  no  waste  of  power  in  forming  the  different  animals 
of  the  same  class.  But  trace  back  the  supposed  pedigree 
of  the  animals  sharing  this  chemical  composition  of  the 
blood,  character  of  tissues,  and  vascular  system,  until  you 
have  passed  through  the  amphibians  and  reached  their  sup- 
posed fish  progenitors.  Somewhere  between  the  fishes  and 
the  higher  mammals,  you  have  not  only  a  great  change  in 
the  chemical  composition  of  the  blood-vessels  and  tissues, 
but  an  equally  great  change  in  the  apparatus  by  which  the 
blood  is  oxygenated.*  How  can  these  changes  have  been 
brought  about  without  a  new  and  intentional  structure  of 
the  vessels  and  the  apparatus  for  supplying  the  oxygen  de- 
manded for  the  continuation  of  life  ?  How  can  we  ex- 
plain these  changes  by  such  agencies  as  the  natural  selec- 

*  The  popular  terms — "  fish  "  and  "  flesh  " — present  to  the  mind  the 
most  vivid  idea  of  this  change  from  the  characteristic  substance  of  one  of 
these  animals  to  that  of  another. 


IDEAL  PLAN  AND  SPECIAL  ADAPTATIONS.     123 

tion  which  is  supposed  to  lead  to  the  ^'suryival  of  the 
fittest, '*  and  the  sexual  selection  which  is  supposed  to  give 
to  the  best-appointed  males  of  a  given  species  the  power  to 
transmit  to  their  offspring  the  new  peculiarities  which  they 
have  acquired  through  successive  generations  ?  Do  not 
these  changes  show  that  there  is  a  line  of  division  which 
such  agencies  alone  can  not  cross  ?  Do  they  not  clearly 
point  to  the  exercise  of  the  creative  power  in  a  special 
manner,  and  for  special  purposes  ?  That  power  being  once 
exercised,  the  new  chemical  composition  and  mechanical 
appliances  being  devised,  the  same  "ideal  plan"  could  be 
carried  through  a  new  class  of  animals  by  a  repetition 
which  is  in  accordance  with  the  economy  of  Nature,  and 
which  an  infinite  power  could  adapt  to  the  formation  of 
animals,  each  of  which  was  designed  to  perpetuate  its  own 
species  and  no  other.  Hence  we  should  expect  to  find  in 
the  animals  sharing  in  the  same  formation  of  the  blood  and 
the  vascular  system  a  corresponding  process  of  healing  the 
parts  severed  by  a  wound,  and  a  continuous  secretion  from 
such  vessels  as  have  not  been  cut  away  ;  but  we  should  not 
expect  to  find  the  stumps  growing  into  a  new  and  perfect 
pai't,  to  take  the  place  of  what  has  been  removed  by  ampu- 
tation.* We  should  expect  to  find  the  same  drugs  affect- 
ing different  animals  of  the  same  class  alike ;  and  when 
the  nervous  system  of  a  class  of  animals  is  upon  the  same 
general  plan,  we  should  expect  to  find  them  similarly  af- 
fected by  stimulants.  But  these  resemblances  do  not 
militate  very  strongly  against  the  hypothesis  of  special 
creations,  when  we  consider  that  it  is  according  to  the 
universal  economy  of  the  Omnipotent  Creator  to  employ 
the  necessary,  and  no  more  than  the  necessary,  power  in 
originating  a  plan  that  may  be  applied  to  the  formation  of 

*  See  the  note  on  amputation,  or  severance  of  parts,  at  the  end  of  this 
chapter. 


124  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTIOIT? 

a  distinct  class  of  beings,  and  that  his  adaptations  of  this 
plan  to  further  andspecific  constructions  of  beings  belong- 
ing to  a  general  class,  but  differing  widely  from  each  other, 
are  among  the  strongest  and  plainest  proofs  of  his  infinite 
power  and  the  nature  of  his  methods. 

In  regard  to  the  "rudiments"  that  are  found  in  man, 
the  theory  of  Mr.  Darwin  can  be  best  stated  in  his  own 
words  :  "In  order  to  understand  the  existence  of  rudi- 
mentary organs,  we  have  only  to  suppose  that  a  former 
progenitor  possessed  the  parts  in  question  in  a  perfect  state, 
and  that  under  changed  habits  of  life  they  became  greatly 
reduced,  either  from  simple  disuse  or  through  the  natural 
selection  of  those  individuals  which  were  least  encumbered 
with  a  superfluous  part,  aided  by  the  other  means  previous- 
ly indicated."  *  But,  in  order  to  do  justice  to  this  theory, 
it  is  necessary  to  repeat  the  description  and  operation  of 
the  supposed  agencies  of  natural  and  sexual  selection. 
Natural  selection  is  an  occurrence  which  takes  place  among 
the  individuals  of  a  certain  species  in  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence, whereby  those  who  are  best  appointed  secure  the 
necessary  supply  of  food,  and  the  weaker  or  less  active  are 
either  directly  destroyed  in  the  contest  or  perish  for  want 
of  nourishment.  The  "  fittest  "  having  survived,  they  have 
the  best  chance  of  procreating  their  kind,  and  are  likely  to 
have  the  most  progeny.  To  these  individuals  there  comes 
in  aid  the  sexual  selection,  which  means  chiefly  the  victory 
of  the  fittest  males  over  their  less  fit  competitors  for  the 
possession  of  the  females.  Whatever  peculiarities  of  struct- 
ure or  development,  or  diminution  of  structure  or  devel- 
opment, these  fittest  males  possess,  they  would  transmit  to 
their  offspring.  This  tendency  would  be  enhanced  by  the 
varying  conditions  of  life  through  which  the  successive 
generations  might  have  to  pass  ;  so  that  if  the  former  pro- 

*  "  Descent  of  Man,"  p.  25. 


RUDIMENTS.  125 

genitor  possessed  naturally  an  organ  in  a  perfect  state,  but 
ceased  to  make  use  of  it,  and  for  thousands  of  generations 
its  use  went  on  diminishing,  it  would  sink  into  the  condi- 
tion of  a  mere  rudiment.  Supposing  this  to  be  a  partially 
true  explanation  of  the  modes  in  which  organs  become  rudi- 
mentary, how  does  it  militate  against  the  idea  of  separate 
creations  ?  We  have  "only  to  suppose"  that  the  first  men 
possessed,  for  example,  the  power  of  moving  the  skin  all 
over  their  bodies  by  the  contraction  of  certain  muscles, 
and  that  their  remote  descendants  lost  it  everywhere  ex- 
cepting in  a  few  parts,  where  it  remains  in  an  efficient 
state,  and  that  it  has  become  varied  in  different  individu- 
als. The  process  by  which  organs  become  rudimentary  is 
an  h3rpothesis  just  as  consistent  with  the  separate  creation 
of  man  as  it  is  with  his  being  a  co-descendant  from  some 
lower  animal  whose  descendants  branched  into  men,  apes, 
horses,  seals,  bats,  etc.  ;  for,  on  the  supposition  of  the 
separate  creation  of  all  these  different  animals,  each  species 
might  have  been  originally  endowed  with  this  power  of 
muscular  contraction  of  the  skin,  and  in  their  descendants  it 
might  have  been  retained  or  varied  or  have  become  more  or 
less  rudimentary,  according  to  its  utility  to  the  particular 
species.  The  truth  is,  that  our  own  faculties  of  creation  or 
construction,  when  we  undertake  to  deal  with  matter  and 
its  properties,  are  so  imperfect,  and  that  which  constitutes 
living  organisms  is  so  utterly  beyond  our  reach,  that  we  do 
not  suflBciently  remember  how  entirely  it  is  within  the 
compass  of  the  infinite  Power,  which  has  given  to  matter 
all  the  properties  that  it  possesses  and  has  living  organisms 
under  its  absolute  control,  to  form  a  system  of  construction 
and  operation  for  beings  of  entirely  distinct  characters,  car- 
rying it  through  each  of  them  in  parallel  lines,  or  causing 
it  to  diverge  into  varying  results  with  an  economy  that 
neither  wastes  the  constructive  power  nor  fails  to  exert  it 
where  it  is  needed.     To  argue  that  the  presence  of  rudi- 


126  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

ments  in  different  animals,  in  different  comparatiye  states 
of  development  or  efficiency,  or  in  a  purely  useless  condi- 
tion, can  only  be  explained  by  a  descent  from  some  remote 
common  progenitor,  is  wbat  the  logicians  call  a  non  sequi- 
tur.  It  overlooks  the  illimitable  faculty  of  the  creating 
Power,  and  disregards  the  great  fact  that  such  a  power  acts 
by  an  economy  that  is  saving  where  uniformity  will  accom- 
plish what  is  intended,  that  is  profuse  where  variation  is 
needful,  and  that  can  guide  its  own  exertions  of  power,  or 
Its  abstention  from  such  exertions,  by  unerring  wisdom,  to 
the  most  varied  and  exact  results. 

I  trust  that  by  the  use  of  the  term  "  economy  "  in  speak- 
ing of  what  is  observable  in  the  works  of  the  Creator,  I 
shall  be  understood  as  comprehending  both  the  avoidance 
of  unnecessary  and  the  exertion  of  all  necessary  power.  Of 
the  degree  of  necessity  in  any  exercise  of  a  power  which  we 
suppose  to  be  infinite,  we  can  only  judge  by  what  we  can 
see.  If  omnipotence  and  omniscience  are  to  be  predicated 
of  the  being  who  is  supposed  to  preside  over  the  universe, 
it  is  rational  to  conclude,  from  all  that  we  can  discover, 
that,  in  applying  a  uniform  system  of  construction  to  differ- 
ent animals  of  a  certain  general  class,  he  acted  upon  a  prin- 
ciple that  his  unerring  faculties  enabled  him  to  see  was  a 
comprehensive  one ;  and  that  in  producing  variations  of 
that  system  of  construction  that  would  result  in  adapting 
its  uniformity  to  the  varying  conditions  of  the  different 
species,  he  acted  by  the  same  boundless  wisdom  and  power. 
If  these  postulates  of  the  Divine  attributes  are  conceded, 
rudiments  do  not  by  any  means  necessarily  lead  to  the  con- 
clusion that  all  the  animals  of  a  certain  class  are  co-descend- 
ants from  some  remote  common  progenitor,  for  they  do  not 
exclude  the  hypothesis  that  each  distinct  animal  was  formed 
upon  a  general  plan  of  construction  that  could  be  applied 
throughout  the  class,  but  that  it  was  varied  according  to 
the  special  conditions  of  its  intended  being.     Organs  or 


GENERAL  LAWS.  127 

parts  may  thus  haye  become  more  or  less  rudimentary  with- 
out resorting  to  the  supposition  of  a  common  progenitor  for 
the  whole  class.  That  supposition,  indeed,  makes  it  neces- 
sary to  assume  that  the  infinite  Creator  fashioned  some  one 
animal,  and  then,  abstaining  from  all  work  of  further  di- 
rect creation,  left  all  the  other  animals  to  be  evolyed  out  of 
that  one  by  the  operation  of  secondary  causes  that  fail  even 
as  a  theory  to  account  for  what  we  see,  and  that  can  not  be 
traced  through  any  results  that  have  yet  been  discovered. 
Wherever  we  pause  in  the  ascending  scale  of  the  Darwinian 
descent  of  man,  wherever  we  place  the  first  special  act  of 
creative  power,  whether  we  put  it  at  the  fish-like  animal 
of  the  most  remote  antiquity,  and  call  that  creature  the 
original  progenitor  of  all  the  vertebrata,  or  whether  we 
suppose  a  special  creation  to  have  occurred  at  the  intro- 
duction of  the  mammalian  series,  or  anywhere  else,  we 
have  to  account  for  changes  of  system,  new  constructions, 
elaborately  diversified  forms,  by  the  operation  of  agencies 
that  were  iu capable  of  producing  the  results,  if  we  are  to 
judge  of  their  capacity  by  anything  that  we  have  seen  or 
known  of  their  effects. 

I  will  conclude  this  chapter  by  expressing  as  accurately 
as  I  can  what  has  struck  me  as  the  excessive  tendency  of 
modern  science  to  resolve  everything  into  the  operation  of 
general  laws,  or  into  what  we  call  secondary  causes.  I  may 
be  able  to  suggest  nothing  new  upon  this  part  of  the  sub- 
ject, but  I  shall  at  least  be  able,  I  hope,  to  put  my  own 
mind  in  contact  with  that  of  the  reader  by  explaining  what 
has  impressed  me  in  the  speculations  of  those  who  lay  so 
much  stress  upon  the  potency  of  general  laws  to  produce 
the  results  which  we  see  in  Nature.  Of  course,  I  do  not 
question  the  great  fact  that  the  infinite  Power  acts  by  and 
through  the  uniform  methods  from  which  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  infer  what  we  call  laws  ;  which  in  physics  is  noth- 
ing but  a  deduction  of  regularity  and  system  from  that 


128  CREATIOiT  OR  EVOLUTION? 

which  we  see  to  be  jDerpetually  and  invariably  happening. 
Now,  I  do  not  enter  here  into  the  question  of  the  tendency 
of  modern  science  to  displace  our  religious  ideas  of  a  special 
Providence,  by  attributing  everything  in  Nature  to  the 
operation  of  lixed  laws  of  matter  ;  or  its  tendency,  in  other 
words,  to  remove  the  infinite  Being  at  a  greater  distance 
from  us  than  that  in  which  our  religious  feelings  like  to 
contemplate  him.  I  am  perfectly  sensible  that  in  truth  the 
infinite  God  is  just  as  near  to  us,  when  we  regard  him  as 
acting  by  general  laws  and  secondary  causes,  as  when  we  be- 
lieve him  to  be  exercising  a  direct  and  special  power.  I  am 
equally  sensible  that  it  is  in  the  very  nature  of  infinite  power, 
wisdom,  and  benevolence  to  be  able  and  willing  to  ordain 
uniform  and  fixed  principles  of  action.  That  Power  which 
gives  to  matter  all  its  properties  may  well  be  supposed  to 
have  established  uniformity  and  regularity  of  movements, 
forces,  combinations,  and  qualities.  How  supremely  con- 
sistent this  uniformity  and  regularity  are,  with  what  stu- 
pendous accuracy  they  are  kept  forever  in  operation,  we  are 
more  or  less  able  to  discern  ;  and  that  benevolence  which  is 
believed  to  accompany  the  power  may  well  be  supposed 
to  have  intended  that  its  intelligent  and  rational  creatures 
should  be  able  in  some  degree  to  discover  and  to  avail  them- 
selves of  these  unvarying  laws  of  the  physical  world.  But 
are  these  laws  to  be  supposed  to  be  the  only  methods  by 
which  the  infinite  Will  has  ever  acted  ?  Is  it  to  be  assumed 
that,  having  settled  and  established  these  perpetual  princi- 
ples, on  which  matter,  organized  or  unorganized,  is  to  act, 
he  leaves  everything  to  their  operation  and  abstains  from 
all  further  exertion  of  his  creative  power  for  any  special 
purpose  ?  Has  he  given  to  these  general  laws  a  potency  to 
produce,  in  and  of  themselves,  all  the  results  ?  In  other 
words,  has  he  affixed  to  their  operation  no  limitations,  or 
has  he  set  bounds  to  them,  and  reserved  to  himself,  by  di- 
rect, specific,  and  occasional  exercise  of  his  will  and  power. 


AMPUTATION  OF  PARTS.  129 

for  new  purposes,  to  produce  results  for  which  the  general 
laws  were  not  ordained  ? 

It  is  not  necessary  here  to  enter  into  the  consideration 
of  what  are  called  "miracles."  These,  in  their  true  mean- 
ing, are  special  interpositions,  which  the  Divine  Power  is 
supposed  to  make,  by  a  suspension  or  interruption  of  the 
established  laws  of  Nature ;  and,  whatever  may  be  the 
grounds  of  our  belief  or  our  unbelief  in  such  occurrences, 
they  are  not  exercises  of  power  such  as  those  which  are  sup- 
posed to  take  place  in  special  creations  of  new  beings.  That 
the  hypothesis  of  special  creations  of  new  beings  involves 
no  interruption  or  displacement  of  the  fixed  laws  of  Nature, 
is  quite  manifest. 

Note  A. 

Note  on  Amputation,  or  Severance  op  Parts. — As  Mr.  Darwin  at- 
tached  some  importance  to  a  fact  which  he  asserted  respecting  the  efforts 
of  Nature  to  restore  a  part  of  an  organism  which  has  been  severed  by 
amputation,  I  think  it  well  to  quote  his  statement,  and  to  point  out  what 
I  believe  to  be  an  inaccuracy.  His  statement  is  this :  "  His  [man's] 
wounds  are  repaired  by  the  same  process  of  healing,  and  the  stumps  left 
after  the  amputation  of  his  limbs,  especially  during  an  early  embryonic 
period,  occasionally  possess  some  power  of  regeneration,  as  in  the  lowest 
animals."  It  is  not  quite  apparent  what  he  means  by  amputation  during 
an  early  embryonic  period.  If  he  is  to  be  understood  as  referring  to  a  case 
of  complete  severance  of  any  part  of  an  embryo  before  birth,  it  has  not 
been  demonstrated  that  such  a  severance  has  been  followed  by  a  successful 
effort  of  Nature  to  replace  the  severed  part ;  and  it  is  difficult  to  under- 
stand how  there  could  be  such  an  amputation  during  embryonic  life  without 
destroying  the  life  of  the  embryo ;  or,  if  the  severed  part  were  one  of  the 
extremities,  how  there  could  be  a  new  extremity  formed.  In  such  a  case, 
if  life  continued  and  birth  were  to  take  place,  the  animal  must  be  bom  in 
an  imperfect  state.  In  regard  to  amputations  taking  place  at  any  time 
after  birth,  if  the  expression  "  some  power  of  regeneration"  means  to  imply 
a  new  formation  to  take  the  place  of  the  severed  part,  the  assertion  is  not 
correct.  "What  occurs  in  such  cases  may  be  illustrated  by  the  very  common 
accident  of  the  severance  of  the  end  of  a  human  finger  at  the  root  of  the 
nail.  If  the  incision  is  far  enough  back  to  remove  the  whole  of  the  vessels 
which  secrete  the  homy  substance  that  forms  the  nail,  there  will  be  no  after- 


130  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

growth  of  anything  resembling  a  nail.  If  some  of  those  vessels  are  left  in 
the  stump,  there  will  be  continuous  secretion  and  deposit  of  the  homy  sub- 
stance, which  may  go  so  far  as  to  form  a  crude  resemblance  to  a  nail.  But 
if  all  the  vessels  which  constitute  the  means  of  perpetuating  a  perfect  nail 
are  not  left  in  their  normal  number  and  action,  there  can  be  no  such  thing 
as  the  formation  of  a  new  nail.  Whether  it  is  correct  to  speak  of  the  im- 
perfect continuation  of  a  few  of  the  vessels  to  secrete  the  substance  which 
it  is  their  normal  function  to  secrete,  as  a  "  power  of  regeneration,"  is  more 
than  doubtful,  if  by  such  a  power  is  meant  a  power  to  make  a  new  and  com- 
plete structure  to  take  the  place  of  the  structure  that  has  been  cut  away. 
It  is  nothing  more  than  the  continued  action  of  a  few  vessels,  less  in  num- 
ber than  the  normal  system  required  for  the  continued  growth  and  renewal 
of  the  part  in  question.  The  abortive  product  in  such  cases  looks  like  an  un- 
successful effort  of  Nature  to  make  a  new  structure  in  place  of  the  old  one  ; 
but  it  is  not  in  reality  such  an  effort.  The  fact  that  the  same  thing  occurs, 
in  just  the  same  way  and  to  a  corresponding  extent,  in  different  animals,  has 
no  tendency  to  prove  anything  excepting  that  these  different  animals  share 
the  same  general  system  of  secreting  vessels  for  the  formation  and  perpetu- 
ation of  the  several  parts  of  their  structures.  It  has  no  tendency  to  prove 
that  they  are  co-descendants  from  a  common  ancestral  stock,  for  on  the 
hypothesis  of  their  special  and  independent  creation  a  common  system  of 
secreting  vessels  would  be  entirely  consistent  with  their  peculiar  and  special 
constructions. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

The  doctrine  of  evolution  according  to  Herbert  Spencer. 

Passing  from  Mr.  Darwin  as  the  representative  of  that 
class  of  naturalists  who  have  undertaken  to  assign  the  pedi- 
gree of  man  by  tracing  the  stages  of  his  development  back 
to  the  lowest  and  crudest  form  of  animal  life,  I  now  come 
to  a  philosopher  whose  speculations  carry  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  through  every  field  of  inquiry,  and  who,  finding, 
as  he  supposes,  evidence  of  its  operation  throughout  all  the 
other  realms  of  the  physical  and  the  moral  word,  contends 
that'it  also  obtains  in  the  animal  kingdom.  It  were  to  be 
wished  that  this  writer,  whose  intellect  is  of  the  order  of 
minds  to  which  we  naturally  look  for  a  judicial  treatment 
of  such  themes,  had  been  a  little  less  dogmatic  in  his  treat- 
ment of  the  doctrine  of  special  creations.  Mr.  Spencer  has, 
indeed,  consistently  recognized  the  necessity  of  trying  the 
question  between  the  hypothesis  of  special  creations  and 
the  hypothesis  of  evolution,  as  one  to  be  decided,  if  it  is  to 
be  decided  at  all,  only  by  an  examination  of  evidenc^  But 
to  one  who  approaches  this  question  in  a  spirit  of  inquiry, 
and  with  a  desire  to  learn  whatever  can  be  said  on  both 
sides,  it  is  somewhat  disappointing  to  find  that  the  most 
eminent  writer  of  the  evolution  school  is  unjust  in  his 
treatment  of  the  belief  which  he  opposes.  There  can  be 
no  objection  to  advocacy,  or  to  strong  and  decided  advo- 
cacy, when  settled  convictions  are  to  be  vindicated.  But 
with  advocacy  we.  may  expect  that  kind  of  fairness  which 


132  CREATIOX  OR  EVOLUTION? 

consists  in  a  full  recognition  of  the  opposite  argument.  A 
great  master  of  dialectics  once  laid  it  down  as  a  maxim  of 
advocacy,  '*  State  the  case  of  your  opponent  as  strongly  as 
you  know  how,  stronger  if  possible  than  he  states  it  him- 
self, and  then  answer  it,  if  you  can."  Some  instances  in 
which  Mr.  Spencer  has  not  followed  this  wise  rule  may 
now  be  mentioned : 

1.  He  attacks  with  great  vigor  the  hypothesis  that  liv- 
ing beings  resulted  from  special  creations,  as  a  primitive 
hypothesis  ;  and  because  it  is  a  very  ancient  belief  he  pro- 
nounces it  to  be  probably  untrue.  He  even  goes  so  far  as 
to  assert  that  its  antiquity  raises  a  presumption  against  it. 
He  classes  it  among  a  family  of  beliefs  which  began  in 
primitive  ages,  and  which  have  one  after  another  been  de- 
stroyed by  advancing  knowledge,  until  this  one  is  almost 
the  only  member  of  the  family  that  survives  among  educated 
people.*  He  says  that  if  you  catechise  any  one  who  holds 
this  belief  as  to  the  source  from  which  he  derived  it,  he  is 
forced  to  confess  that  it  was  put  into  his  mind  in  child- 
hood, as  one  portion  of  a  story  which,  as  a  whole,  he  has 
long  since  rejected.  It  will  give  way  at  last,  along  with  all 
the  rest  of  the  family  of  beliefs  which  have  already  been 
given  up.  It  may  be  that  the  arguments  of  those  whose 
controversial  writings  on  this  subject  Mr.  Spencer  had  be- 
fore him,  relied  on  the  antiquity  of  this  belief  as  one  of  the 
strongest  proofs  of  its  probable  truth.  1  have  not  looked 
to  see  how  any  writer  on  that  side  of  the  question  has  used 
the  antiquity  of  the  doctrine  of  special  creations.  But  it 
is  certainly  not  in  accordance  with  the  sound  rule,  even  of 
advocacy,  to  state  the  argument  in  support  of  the  belief 
which  you  oppose  with  less  than  the  force  that  may  be 
given  to  it,  whether  your  opponents  have  or  have  not  given 
to  it  the  true  force  that  belongs  to  it.     The  mere  antiquity 

*  "  The  Principles  of  Biology,"  by  Herbert  Spencer,  vol.  i,  p.  334  ei 
ieq.    I  use  the  American  edition,  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  1881. 


PRIMITIVE  BELIEFS.  133 

of  the  belief  in  special  creations  has  this  force  and  no  more  : 
that  a  belief  -which  began  in  the  primitive  ages  of  mankind, 
and  has  survived  through  all  periods  of  advancing  knowl- 
edge, must  have  something  to  recommend  it.  It  is  not 
one  of  those  things  that  can  be  swept  away  with  contempt 
as  a  nursery-tale,  originating  in  times  of  profound  igno- 
rance and  handed  down  from  generation  to  generation  with- 
out inquiry.  That  it  has  survived,  after  the  rejection  of 
other  beliefs  that  originated  at  the  same  period — survived 
in  minds  capable  of  dealing  with  the  evidence  in  the  light 
of  increasing  knowledge — is  proof  that  it  has  something 
more  to  rest  upon  than  the  time  of  its  origin.  If  some  of 
its  defenders  now  assert  its  antiquity  as  the  sole  or  the 
strongest  argument  in  its  favor,  its  opponents  should  not 
assume  that  this  is  the  only  or  the  best  argument  by  which 
it  can  be  supported.  Nor  can  it  be  summarily  disposed  of 
by  classifying  it  as  one  of  a  family  of  beliefs  that  originated 
in  times  of  ignorance,  and  that  have  mostly  disappeared 
from  the  beliefs  held  by  educated  people.  Its  association 
with  a  special  class  of  mistaken  beliefs  affords  no  intrinsic 
improbability  of  its  truth.  Every  belief  has  come  to  be 
regarded  as  a  mistaken  or  a  true  one,  not  according  to  its 
associated  relations  with  other  beliefs  that  have  come  to  be 
regarded  as  unfounded,  but  according  to  the  tests  that  the 
knowledge  of  the  age  has  been  able  to  apply  to  it.  Take 
the  whole  catalogue  of  beliefs  that  began  to  be  held  in  the 
darkest  ages,  and  it  will  be  found  that  their  association  has 
had  no  influence  beyond  inducing  incorrect  habits  of  rea- 
soning on  certain  subjects,  or  a  habit  of  accepting  the  offi- 
cial authority  of  those  who  claimed  to  be  the  special  cus- 
todians o.f  truth.  These  intellectual  habits  have  been  tem- 
porary in  their  influence,  and  have  gradually  changed. 
Every  one  of  the  beliefs  that  have  been  given  up  by  the  let- 
tered or  the  unlettered  part  of  mankind,  has  been  given  up 
because  better  knowledge  of  a  special  character  has  come 


134:  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

to  show  that  it  is  unfounded,  and  because  mere  official  au- 
thority has  ceased  to  have  the  power  that  it  once  had.  If 
a  belief  has  suryiyed  from  a  remote  antiquity  among  those 
who  are  competent  to  judge  of  the  eyidence  in  its  fayor,  by 
comparing  the  phenomena  that  increasing  knowledge  has 
accumulated,  the  force  of  the  fact  that  it  has  so  suryiyed 
is  not  weakened  by  its  association  for  a  period  with  other 
beliefs  that  are  now  rejected. 

Mr.  Spencer  asserts  that,  as  the  supposition  of  special 
creations  is  discredited  by  its  origin  in  a  time  when  men 
were  profoundly  ignorant,  so  conyersely  the  supposition 
that  races  of  organisms  haye  been  gradually  eyolyed  is  cred- 
ited by  its  origin,  because  it  is  a  belief  that  has  come  into 
existence  in  the  most  instructed  class,  liying  in  these  better 
instructed  times.  This  is  a  kind  of  argumentation  that  is 
often  the  result  of  a  loye  of  antithesis.  The  soundness  of 
the  last  branch  of  the  proposition  appears  to  depend  upon 
the  soundness  of  the  first  branch.  Make  it  to  appear  that 
the  origin  of  the  elder  hypothesis  is  unfayorable  by  reason 
of  the  time  of  its  origin,  and  it  seems  to  follow  that  the 
origin  of  the  modern  hypothesis  is  fayorable  by  reason  of 
its  time  of  origin.  But  this  antithesis  does  not  express  the 
exact  truth  in  either  branch  of  it.  It  is  not  because  of  its 
antiquity,  or  of  the  character  of  the  times  in  which  it  was 
first  belieyed,  that  the  doctrine  of  special  creations  can  be 
shown  to  be  irrational  or  improbable.  There  is  no  pre- 
sumption against  the  truth  of  any  belief,  to  be  deriyed 
from  the  fact  that  it  was  held  by  persons  who  also  held 
some  erroneous  beliefs  on  other  subjects.  If  there  were, 
nothing  could  be  worthy  of  belief  unless  it  could  show  a 
recent  origin,  or  at  least  until  demonstration  of  its  truth 
had  oyercome  the  presumption  against  it.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  is  no  presumption  in  fayor  of  the  truth  of  a 
new  theory  to  be  deriyed  from  the  fact  that  it  is  new,  or 
that  it  originated  among  those  who  think  that  they  do  not 


SPECIAL  CREATIONS.  135 

hold  any  erroneous  beliefs,  or  because  it  originated  in  a 
comparatively  yery  enlightened  age.  Every  physical  and 
every  moral  theory,  unless  we  mean  to  be  governed  by  mere 
authority,  whether  it  is  ancient  or  recent,  must  be  judged 
by  its  merits,  according  to  the  evidence. 

2.  Another  of  Mr.  Spencer's  naked  assertions  is  that  the 
belief  in  special  creations  is  "  not  countenanced  by  a  single 
fact."  Not  only  did  no  man  *^ever  see  a  special  creation," 
but  "  no  one  ever  found  indirect  proof  of  any  kind  that  a 
special  creation  had  taken  place."  In  support  of  this  sweep- 
ing dogma,  he  adduces  a  habit  of  the  naturalists  who  main- 
tain special  creations  to  locate  them  in  some  region  remote 
from  human  observation.  *  This  is  another  instance  of  not 
stating  the  case  of  your  adversary  as  strongly  as  you  might 
state  it,  or  as  he  states  it  himself.  While  no  naturalist  and 
no  other  person  who  believes  in  special  creations  ever  saw 
one  take  place,  indirect  and  circumstantial  evidence  tend- 
ing to  show  that  the  earth  is  full  of  them  has  been  accumu- 
lated to  an  enormous  amount.  It  is  a  monstrous  extrava- 
gance to  assert  that  the  hypothesis  is  ''absolutely  without 
support  of  any  kind."  What  if  Mr.  Spencer's  opponents 
were  to  retort  that  no  man  ever  saw  an  instance  in  which 
an  animal  of  a  distinct  species  had  been  evolved  out  of  one 
of  an  entirely  different  organization ;  that  there  is  no  ex- 
ternal evidence  to  support  the  hypothesis  of  such  deriva- 
tions, and  that  the  naturalists  of  the  evolution  school  ha- 
bitually place  the  scene  of  operations  in  the  region  of  scien- 
tific imagination  ?  The  discovery  of  truth  is  not  likely  to 
be  much  advanced  by  this  mode  of  attacking  opposite  opin- 
ions, yet  it  could  be  used  with  as  much  propriety  on  the 
one  side  of  this  question  as  on  the  other. 

3.  Next,  and  completing  the  misrepresentation,  we  have 
the  assertion  that,  ''besides  being  absolutely  without  evi- 

*  "  Biology,"  i,  p.  33^. 


136  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

dence  to  give  it  external  support,  this  hypothesis  of  spe- 
cial creations  can  not  support  itself  internally — can  not  be 
framed  into  a  coherent  thought.  .  .  .  Immediately  an  at- 
tempt is  made  to  elaborate  the  idea  into  anything  like  defi- 
nite shape,  it  proves  to  be  a  pseud-idea,  admitting  of  no 
definite  shape.  Is  it  supposed  that  a  new  organism  when 
specially  created  is  created  out  of  nothing  ?  If  so,  there  is 
a  supposed  creation  of  matter,  and  the  creation  of  matter 
is  inconceivable,  implies  the  establishment  of  a  relation  in 
thought  between  nothing  and  something — a  relation  of 
which  one  term  is  absent — an  impossible  relation.  .  .  . 
Those  who  entertain  the  proposition  that  each  kind  of  or- 
ganism results  from  divine  interposition  do  so  because  they 
refrain  from  translating  words  into  thoughts.  The  case  is 
one  of  those  where  men  do  not  really  believe,  but  believe 
they  believe.  For  belief,  properly  so  called,  implies  a  men- 
tal representation  of  the  thing  believed  ;  and  no  such  men- 
tal representation  is  here  possible."* 

When  I  first  read  this  passage  I  could  hardly  trust 
the  evidence  of  my  eye-sight.  It  seemed  as  if  the  types 
must  have  in  some  way  misrepresented  the  distinguished 
writer;  for  I  could  scarcely  conceive  how  a  man  of  Mr. 
Spencer's  reputation  as  a  thinker  could  have  deliberately 
penned  and  published  such  a  specimen  of  logic  run  riot. 
It  reads  like  some  of  the  propositions  propounded  by  the 
scholastics  of  the  middle  ages.  But,  having  assured  my- 
self that  the  American  edition  of  his  work  is  a  correct  re- 
print, and  having  carefully  pondered  and  endeavored  to 
ascertain  his  meaning,  I  was  forced  to  the  conclusion  that 
he  supposes  this  to  be  a  conclusive  answer  to  the  idea  of 
absolute  creation  in  respect  to  anything  whatever,  because, 
when  put  into  a  logical  formula,  one  term  of  the  relation 
is  nothing,  and  the  other  term  is  something.     Logical  for- 

*"Biology,"i,  pp.  336,  33Y. 


ABSOLUTE  CREATI02T  CONCEIVABLE.  137 

mulas  are  not  always  the  best  tests  of  the  possibility  of  an 
intellectual  conception,  or  of  what  the  mind  can  represent 
to  itself  by  thought,  although  to  a  certain  class  of  readers 
or  hearers  they  often  appear  to  be  a  crushing  refutation  of 
the  opposite  opinion  or  belief  against  which  they  are  em- 
ployed. 

Is  there  in  truth  anything  impossible  because  it  is  un- 
thinkable in  the  idea  of  absolute  creation  ?  Is  the  creation 
of  matter,  for  example,  inconceivable  ?  It  certainly  is  not 
if  we  adopt  the  postulate  of  an  infinite  Creator.  That  post- 
ulate is  just  as  necessary  to  the  evolutionist  who  maintains 
the  ordination  of  fixed  laws  or  systems  of  matter,  by  the 
operation  of  which  the  organized  forms  of  matter  have 
been  evolved,  as  it  is  to  those  who  maintain  that  these 
forms  are  special  creations.  Who  made  the  laws  that  have 
been  impressed  upon  matter  ?  Were  they  made  at  all,  or 
were  they  without  any  origin,  self-existing  and  eternal  ? 
If  they  were  made,  they  were  made  out  of  nothing,  for 
nothing  preceded  them.  Then  apply  to  them  the  logical 
formula,  and  say  that  one  term  of  the  relation  is  absent — 
is  mere  nothingness — and  so  there  is  an  impossible  relation, 
a  relation  in  thought  between  nothing  and  something,  which 
is  inconceivable.(  This  dilemma  is  not  escaped  by  assert- 
ing, as  Mr.  Spencer  does,  that  "the  creation  of  force  is 
just  as  inconceivable  as  the  creation  of  matter.^)  It  is  ne- 
cessary to  inquire  what  he  means  by  a  "conceivable"  idea. 
If  he  means  that  we  can  not  trace  or  understand  the  process 
by  which  either  force  or  matter  was  created,  our  inability 
may  be  at  once  conceded.  But  if  he  means  that,  granting 
the  postulate  of  an  infinite  creating  power,  we  can  not  con- 
ceive of  the  possibility  that  matter  and  all  the  forces  that 
reside  in  it  or  govern  it  were  called  into  being  by  the  will  of 
that  power,  the  assertion  is  not  true.  Human  faculties  are 
entirely  equal  to  the  conception  of  an  infinite  creating  power, 
whatever  may  be  the  strength  or  the  weakness  of  the  proof 


138  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

by  which  the  existence  of  such  a  power  is  supported ;  and 
if  there  is  such  a  power  it  is  a  contradiction  in  terms  to 
assert  that  absolute  creation,  or  the  formation  of  "some- 
thing" out  of  "nothing,"  is  an  impossible  conception. 
Such  an  assertion  is  simply  a  specious  play  upon  words,  or 
else  it  involves  the  negation  of  an  infinite  creating  power. 
The  term  "creation,"  as  used  in  all  modern  philosophy, 
implies,  ex  vi  termini,  the  act  of  causing  to  exist ;  and, 
unless  we  assume  that  nothing  which  exists  was  ever  caused 
to  exist,  we  must  suppose  that  the  causing  power  was  alike 
capable  of  giving  existence  to  matter  and  to  the  forces  that 
reside  in  it. 

The  reason  why  the  Greek  philosophers  did  not  embrace 
the  idea  of  absolute  creation  was  not  because  it  was  an 
unthinkable  idea,  or  one  incapable  of  representation  in 
thought.  They  were,  as  we  have  seen,  surrounded  by  a 
mythology  which  attributed  the  origin  of  the  world  to 
polytheistic  agencies.  They  struggled  against  the  cosmog- 
ony of  poetical  and  popular  traditions  in  an  effort  to  find 
a  cause  of  a  different  character.  Monotheism,  the  concep- 
tion of  the  one  only  and  omnipotent  God,  freed  philosophy 
from  the  great  want  which  had  hampered  its  speculations. 
This  want  was  the  conception  of  divine  power,  as  abstracted 
from  substance  or  the  qualities  of  substance.  When  this 
conception  had  been  obtained,  absolute  creation  was  seen  to 
be  a  legitimate  deduction  from  the  illimitable  scope  and 
nature  of  the  power  which  monotheism  imputed  to  the 
Being  supposed  to  preside  over  the  universe,  and  to  have 
existed  before  all  the  objects  which  the  universe  contains  : 
and  this  conception  of  the  act  of  creation  thus  became 
equally  capable  of  representation  in  words  and  in  thought. 
You  may  say  that  it  has  no  evidence  to  support  it ;  that  it 
leads  to  contradictory  ideas  of  the  attributes  claimed  for  the 
Creator ;  that  upon  the  hypothesis  of  those  attributes,  his 
works  are  inexplicable.     Whether  you  can  say  this  truly  or 


MEAOTNG  OF  CPwEATION.  139 

not,  you  can  not  say  that  absolute  creation  is  inconceivable  ; 
and  unless  you  mean  to  claim  that  neither  matter  nor  force 
was  ever  created,  that  there  never  was  a  being  competent  to 
make  either  the  one  or  the  other  to  exist,  you  can  not  deny 
the  probability  that  both  were  called  into  being  by  a  definite 
and  specific  exercise  of  power.  Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy 
manifestly  leads  to  the  conclusion  that  there  is  no  God,  or 
no  such  God  as  the  hypothesis  of  special  creations  supposes, 
or  such  as  the  hypothesis  of  evolution  necessarily  calls  for. 
If  I  understand  him  rightly,  he  rejects  the  idea  of  any  cre- 
ation, whether  of  matter,  or  force,  or  the  properties  of 
matter,  or  even  of  law  of  any  kind,  physical  or  moral. 
Hence  it  is  that  I  admit  the  necessity  of  treating  the  exist- 
ence of  the  Omnipotent  Creator  as  an  independent  question 
to  be  judged  upon  moral  evidence  ;  and  hence,  too,  in  rea- 
soning upon  the  probable  methods  of  the  Almighty,  I  main- 
tain that  the  postulate  of  his  existence  is  alike  necessary  to 
the  evolutionist  and  to  those  who  believe  in  special  cre- 
ations, and  that  both  must  adopt  the  same  cardinal  attri- 
butes as  attributes  of  his  power  and  character. 

It  is  well  to  pursue  this  particular  topic  somewhat  fur- 
ther, because  this  special  difficulty  arising  from  the  creation 
of  something  out  of  nothing,  triumphantly  propounded  by 
a  certain  class  of  philosophers,  is  echoed  by  others  as  if  it 
concluded  the  question.  The  received  meaning  of  language 
is  often  a  great  help  to  the  mind  in  representing  to  itself  in 
thought  the  idea  that  is  expressed  by  the  word.  The  word 
contains  and  suggests  the  thought.  Lexicographers  are  the 
learned  persons,  one  part  of  whose  business  it  is  to  exhibit 
the  thought  that  is  represented  by  a  word,  not  according  to 
the  popular  and,  perhaps,  uncertain  or  erroneous  use  of  the 
term,  or  according  to  its  secondary  meanings,  but  accord- 
ing to  the  exact  correspondence  between  the  word  and  the 
idea  which  it  conveys  in  its  primary  and  philosophic  usage. 
The  definition  given  to  our  English  verb  "create,"  in  its 


14:0  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION"? 

primary  and  philosophical  sense,  is  :  "To  produce,"  "to 
bring  into  being  from  nothing";  "to  cause  to  exist." 
"Creation,"  as  a  noun  expressing  the  act  described  by  the 
verb,  is  defined  as  "the  act  of  creating  :  the  act  of  causing 
to  exist,  and  especially ^  the  act  of  bringing  this  world  into 
existence."  "  Created,"  as  the  past  participle  which  de- 
scribes what  has  been  done,  is  defined  as  "formed  from  noth- 
ing :  caused  to  exist ;  produced  ;  generated."*  This  is  the 
sense  in  which  the  word  is  used  in  the  English  version  of  the 
first  verse  of  the  book  of  Genesis  :  "  In  the  beginning  God 
created  the  heavens  and  the  earth  "  ;  and  whatever  may  be 
said  about  the  source  from  which  Moses  derived  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  fact  which  he  relates,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
about  the  nature  of  the  fact  which  he  intended  to  assert. 
Now,  does  the  lexicographer,  when  he  describes  creation  as 
the  act  of  causing  something  to  exist,  or  the  act  of  producing 
something  out  of  nothing,  present  an  idea  that  is  incapable 
of  mental  representation — a  relation  impossible  in  thought  ? 
What  he  means  to  express  is  clear  enough.  Is  the  idea 
which  he  expresses  impossible  to  be  conceived  by  the  mind  ? 
It  will  be  a  good  test  of  this  supposed  insuperable  diflS- 
culty  to  apply  the  term  "creation"  to  some  human  act. 
When  Shakespeare  composed  the  tragedy  of  "  Hamlet,"  he 
created  something  in  the  sense  which  we  are  here  consider- 
ing, f  He  created  that  something  out  of  nothing  :  for  he 
caused  something  to  exist  which  did  not  exist  before.  He 
did  not  merely  inscribe  certain  words  upon  paper,  by  the 
material  process  of  writing,  and  afterward  cause  the  same 
words  to  be  repeated  by  the  material  process  of  printing 

*  Webster's  "  Dictionary  of  the  English  Language." 

\  Let  it  be  remembered  that  the  sense  which  is  here  considered  compre- 
hends not  only  material  objects,  but  also  ideas,  images,  and  in  short  what- 
ever, in  its  kind,  had  no  previous  existence.  This  is  just  as  true  of  an 
original  poem,  or  picture,  or  statue,  or  musical  composition,  as  it  is  of  a 
machine  that  is  both  original  and  new  as  a  piece  of  mechanism. 


CREATING  POWER.  141 

upon  another  paper.  He  gave  intellectual  existence  to  cer- 
tain male  and  female  persons  of  his  imagination,  carried  them 
through  certain  periods  of  their  imaginary  lives,  and  made 
them  and  their  history  an  imperishable  intellectual  idea. 
It  is  entirely  immaterial  to  the  present  discussion  that  such 
a  product  of  the  imagination  presents  to  us  nothing  but 
intellectual  ideas  ;  that  Hamlet  and  Ophelia,  and  the  King 
and  Queen,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  dramatis  personce,  were 
mere  creatures  of  the  poet's  fancy.  Although  they  were 
nothing  but  intellectual  conceptions,  they  were  "  creations  " 
in  the  sense  of  beiag  intellectual  products  that  never  existed 
in  idea  before  the  poet  made  them,  and  therefore  they  were 
made  out  of  nothing.  Now,  although  we  can  not  look  into 
the  mind  of  Shakespeare  and  describe  the  process  by  which 
he  formed  these  creatures  of  his  imagination,  we  experience 
no  difficulty  when  we  contemplate  these  imaginary  person- 
ages, in  representing  in  thought  what  we  mean  when  we 
say  that  he  '^  created  "  them.  It  would  be  simple  absurdity 
to  say  that  he  did  not  create  these  ideal  persons,  because 
the  notion  of  creation  implies  the  formation  of  something 
out  of  nothing.  That  is  the  very  meaning  of  creation  in 
its  primary  and  philosophical  sense  ;  and,  when  applied  to 
works  of  the  human  imagination,  it  presents  to  us  an  idea 
that  is  perfectly  capable  of  representation  in  thought. 

Pass  from  this  illustration  of  the  idea  of  human  creation 
to  the  hypothesis  of  a  supreme  being,  possessing  infinite 
power,  and  existing  before  the  material  universe  began. 
The  hypothesis  of  his  existence  includes  the  power  to  call 
into  being  things  that  had  no  previous  being,  whether  these 
things  be  matter  and  material  properties  or  moral  and  in- 
tellectual ideas.  The  whole  realms  of  possible  existence, 
spiritual  and  material,  the  whole  void  which  consists  in 
mere  nothingness,  are,  according  to  the  hypothesis,  under 
his  absolute  sway.  He  holds  the  power  of  absolute  crea- 
tion ;  and  the  power  this  hypothesis  imputes  to  him  is  no 


142  OEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

more  incapable  of  representation  in  thought  than  is  the 
inferior  and  limited  power  of  creation,  which  we  know  to 
be  performed  by  the  finite  human  intellect,  and  which  we 
have  no  difficulty  in  conceiving  as  a  true  creating  faculty. 
When  Watt  formed  the  steam-engine,  he  did  something 
more  than  to  place  certain  portions  of  matter  in  certain 
relations,  and  make  them  to  operate  in  a  certain  manner  so 
as  to  produce  a  certain  effect.  He  made  the  intellectual 
plan  of  a  certain  arrangement  of  matter  ;  and  to  this  act  of 
giving  being  to  something,  both  intellectual  and  physical, 
which  did  not  exist  before,  we  ascribe  in  its  true  sense  the 
act  of  creation,  and  the  idea  we  express  by  the  term  is  per- 
fectly capable  of  mental  representation. 

**  Those,"  says  Mr.  Spencer,  **  who  entertain  the  propo- 
sition that  each  kind  of  organism  results  from  a  divine  in- 
terposition, do  so  because  they  refrain  from  translating 
words  into  thoughts  " ;  and  he  adds,  quite  truly,  that  there 
is  no  assignable  mode  or  conceivable  way  in  which  the 
making  of  a  new  organism  can  be  described.  Let  this  be 
applied  to  some  new  mechanical  structure  produced  by  the 
intellect  and  hand  of  man.  It  is  a  result  or  product  of 
humau  interposition.  When  we  describe  this  human  prod- 
uct as  an  invention,  do  we  refrain  from  translating  words 
into  thoughts  because  we  can  not  describe  the  process  of 
invention  ?  or,  in  other  words,  because  we  can  not  assign 
the  mode  in  which  the  mind  of  the  inventor  reached  his 
conception,  are  we  to  conclude  that  he  did  not  attain  to 
the  conception  which  is  plainly  embodied  in  the  machine 
that  stands  before  our  eyes  ?  If  we  say  that  he  created 
something,  do  we  make  a  statement  that  can  not  be  con- 
sistently imagined  because  we  can  not  assign  the  mode  in 
which  his  mind  operated  when  it  thought  out  the  idea  and 
constructed  the  plan  ?  We  can  see  how  he  put  together 
certain  material  substances,  and  how  they  operate  ;  but  we 
can  not  see  or  describe  the  mental  process  by  which  he  ob- 


CREATION  POSSIBLE.  143 

tained  his  conception.  Yet  we  ascribe  to  his  act,  and 
rightly  ascribe  to  it,  the  idea  of  creation ;  and  the  term 
represents  a  thought  of  the  mind  that  is  as  capable  of  being 
imagined  as  the  word  is  of  being  spoken  and  understood. 

When  Eaphael  painted  the  Sistine  Madonna,  he  formed 
in  his  mind  an  image  of  the  heaven-chosen  mother  of 
Christ,  and  the  marvelous  skill  of  his  artist  hand  trans- 
ferred that  face  of  surpassing  loveliness  to  the  canvas.  The 
story  that  it  tells  may  be  a  fiction  or  a  fact.  The  image  is 
a  reality.  It  was  a  new  existence  ;  and,  if  we  call  it  a  crea- 
tion, do  we  use  a  word  which  we  can  not  translate  into 
thought  because  we  do  not  know  how  the  painter  attained 
to  that  sweet  conception  of  the  human  mother's  tenderness, 
and  the  dignity  of  her  appointed  office  as  the  handmaiden 
of  the  Lord  ? 

There  is  nothing  unphilosophical  in  thus  ascribing  what 
is  done  by  finite  human  faculties  and  what  is  done  by  the 
infinite  Creator  to  a  power  that  is  of  the  same  nature,  but 
which  in  the  one  being  is  limited  and  imperfect,  and  in  the 
other  is  superhuman  and  boundless.  If  we  know,  as  we 
certainly  do,  that  weak  and  finite  man  can  perform  some 
acts  of  creation,  can  cause  some  things  to  exist  that  did  not 
previously  exist,  how  much  more  may  we  safely  conclude 
that  a  being  of  infinite  powers  can  call  into  existence,  out 
of  the  primeval  nothingness,  objects  of  the  most  stupendous 
proportions,  of  the  nicest  adaptations,  of  the  most  palpable 
uses — can  cause  matter  and  force  and  law  to  be  where  be- 
fore all  was  vacuity,  where  force  was  unknown,  where  law 
had  never  operated !  When  the  mind  contemplates  that 
Omnipotent  Power,  it  reaches  forth  to  an  awful  presence  ; 
but  it  does  not  contemplate  something  of  which  it  can  not 
conceive,  for  its  own  inferior  faculties  teach  it  that  creation 
is  a  possible  occurrence. 

We  do  not  need  to  be  and  are  not  indebted  to  supersti- 
tion, to  tradition,  or  to  deceptive  words,  for  the  idea  of 


144  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

creation.  At  an  immeasurable  distance  from  the  Almighty 
Power,  we  ourselves  are  constantly  creating ;  and  it  is  when 
we  do  so  that  our  acts  resemble  his  in  their  nature,  however 
below  his  productions  may  be  the  productions  of  our  poor 
human  faculties.  It  is  one  of  the  proofs  of  our  relation- 
ship to  the  infinite  Creator,  a  proof  for  which  we  are  not 
indebted  solely  to  revelation,  that  we  are  endowed  in  this 
imperfect  degree  with  a  power  that  resembles  his.  It  is 
also  one  of  the  chief  of  the  characteristics  that  distinguish 
man  from  the  other  animals  :  for,  wonderful  as  are  the 
constructions  made  by  some  of  them,  they  are  uniformly 
made  under  the  involuntary  and  uncontrollable  impulse  of 
an  implanted  instinct ;  whereas,  the  constructions  of  man 
are  made  by  the  exercise  of  a  constructive  faculty  that  is 
guided  by  his  will,  which  enables  him  to  effect  variations 
of  structure  entirely  unattainable  by  any  other  being  that 
exists  on  this  earth.  All  the  other  animals  are  confined  in 
the  exercise  of  their  constructive  faculties  to  an  invariable 
model,  appointed  for  each  of  them  according  to  the  circum- 
stances of  its  being.  The  range  of  choice  is  bounded  by 
the  limitations  of  the  instinct  under  which  the  animal  is 
compelled  to  do  its  work.  It  may  appear  to  select  a  favor- 
able site  for  its  habitation,  to  cull  its  materials  with  judg- 
ment, to  guard  against  disturbance  from  the  elements  or 
from  enemies.  But  we  have  not  much  reason  to  suppose 
that  any  of  these  things  are  done  from  anything  but  an 
irresistible  impulse,  and  we  certainly  have  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  the  animal  has  the  moral  power  to  do  them  or  to 
refrain  from  them.  To  man  alone  does  there  appear  to 
have  been  given  the  power  of  varying  his  constructions  by 
the  exercise  of  an  intelligent  will ;  and  that  will  is  bounded 
only  by  the  limitations  of  his  power  over  matter  :  so  that, 
in  respect  to  material  structures,  the  power  of  man  to  make 
creations  approaches  nearest  to  the  power  of  the  Almighty 
Creator,  and  is,  within  its  limitations,  a  true  creating 


CUKRENT  THEOLOGY  DISREGARDED.  145 

power.  In  the  realm  of  intellectual  or  ideal  creations,  the 
resemblance  of  human  and  divine  power  is  the  same,  and 
the  limitations  upon  the  former  are  those  fixed  by  the  finite 
nature  of  human  faculties.* 

■  4.  Mr.  Spencer  has  a  great  deal  to  urge  against  ''  the 
current  theology,"  and  he  treats  of  some  of  the  theological 
diflBculties  in  which  those  who  espouse  the  hypothesis  of 
special  creations  entangle  themselves.  \  I  have  nothing  to 
do  with  the  current  theology.  I  do  not  borrow  from  it  or 
rely  upon  it,  and  do  not  undertake  to  disentangle  its  pro- 
fessors from  any  of  the  difiiculties  in  which  they  may  have 
involved  themselves.  The  only  question  that  interests  me 
is,  whether  the  objections  propounded  by  this  philosopher 
as  an  answer  to  the  hypothesis  of  special  creations  present 
insuperable  difficulties  to  one  who  does  not  depend  upon 
the  current  theology  for  arguments,  explanations,  or  means 
of  judgment.  I  shall  therefore  endeavor  to  state  fairly  and 
fully  the  chief  of  the  supposed  difficulties,  without  consid- 
ering the  answer  that  is  made  to  them  by  those  who  are 
taken  as  the  representatives  of  the  current  theology. 

Put  into  a  condensed  form,  one  of  Mr.  Spencer's  grand 
objections  to  the  belief  in  special  creations  of  organized 

*  Perhaps  I  owe  an  apology  to  a  large  class  of  readers  for  having  be- 
stowed so  much  attention  upon  the  logical  formula  with  which  Mr.  Spencer 
aims  to  dispose  of  the  idea  of  creation.  But  I  have  observed,  especially 
among  young  persons  and  others  whose  habits  of  thinking  are  unformed  or 
not  corrected  by  sound  and  comprehensive  reasoning,  a  popular  reception 
of  this  particular  dogma,  which  makes  it  necessary  to  subject  it  to  some 
careful  analysis.  In  fact,  one  of  my  chief  objects  in  writing  this  book  has 
been  to  contribute  what  I  might  to  the  formation  of  habits  of  testing  philo- 
sophical and  scientific  theories  by  something  better  than  specious  assump- 
tions which  can  be  thrown  into  the  plausible  form  of  logical  propositions. 
There  is  nothing  more  valuable  than  logic,  when  its  forms  represent  a  true 
and  correct  ratiocination ;  and,  when  they  do  not,  there  is  nothing  that  is 
more  delusive.  It  needs  some  discipline  of  mind  to  enable  people  to  see 
when  logic  is  valuable  and  when  it  is  not.  f  "Biology,"  i,  p,  840  et  seg. 


146  CREATION"  OR  EVOLUTION? 

beings  is  that  it  involves  a  deliberate  intention  on  the  part 
of  the  Creator  to  produce  misery,  suffering,  pain,  and  an 
incalculable  amount  of  evil,  or  else  that  there  was  an  ina- 
bility to  prevent  these  results.  Omitting  for  the  present 
the  human  race,  and  confining  our  first  view  to  the  other 
animals,  the  earth  is  largely  peopled  by  creatures  which 
inflict  on  each  other  and  on  themselves  a  vast  amount  of 
suffering.  The  animals  are  endowed  with  countless  differ- 
ent pain-inflicting  appliances  and  instincts ;  the  earth  has 
been  a  scene  of  warfare  among  all  sentient  creatures ;  and 
geology  informs  us  that,  from  the  earliest  eras  which  it 
records,  there  has  been  going  on  this  universal  carnage. 
Throughout  all  past  time  there  has  been  a  perpetual  prey- 
ing of  the  superior  upon  the  inferior — a  ceaseless  devouring 
of  the  weak  by  the  strong.  In  almost  every  species,  the 
number  of  individuals  annually  born  is  such  that  the  ma- 
jority die  of  starvation  or  by  violence  before  ariiving  at 
maturity.  But  this  is  not  all.  Not  only  do  the  supenor 
animals  prey  upon  the  inferibr,  for  which  there  may  be 
suggested  some  compensating  benefit  by  the  sustentation 
of  a  higher  order  of  life  through  the  death  of  the  lower,  or 
by  leaving  the  most  perfect  members  of  a  species  to  con- 
tinue that  species,  but  the  inferior  prey  upon  the  superior, 
and  organisms  that  are  incapable  of  feeling  have  appliances 
for  securing  their  prosperity  at  the  expense  of  misery  to 
organisms  capable  of  happiness.  Of  the  animal  kingdom, 
as  a  whole,  more  than  half,  it  is  said,  are  parasites,  and 
almost  every  known  animal  has  its  peculiar  species.  Pass- 
ing over  the  evils  thus  inflicted  on  animals  of  inferior  dig- 
nity and  coming  to  man,  we  find  that  he  is  infested  by 
animal  and  vegetable  parasites  of  which  two  or  three  dozens 
may  be  distinctly  enumerated  ;  which  are  endowed  with 
constitutions  fitting  them  to  live  by  absorbing  the  juices 
of  the  human  body,  furnished  with  appliances  by  which 
they  root  themselves  in  the  human  system,  and  made  pro- 


MANIFESTATIOJ^S  OF  DIVINE  POWER.         I47 

lific  in  an  almost  incredible  degree.  They  produce  great 
suffering,  sometimes  cause  insanity,  and  not  infrequently 
death.  * 

The  dilemma  that  is  supposed  to  be  created  by  these 
facts  for  those  who  believe  in  the  doctrine  of  special  crea- 
tions is  this  :  If  any  animals  are  special  creations,  all  are 
so  ;  and  each  animal  must  be  supposed  to  have  been  created 
for  the  special  purposes  that  are  apparent  upon  an  exami- 
nation of  its  structure  and  mode  of  life.  As  the  superior 
are  constantly  preying  upon  the  inferior,  and  as  there  are 
numerous  inferior  animals  that  are  constantly  inflicting  evil 
upon  the  superior,  it  results  that  malevolence  rather  than 
benevolence  was  a  characteristic  attribute  of  the  creating 
power,  or  else  that  the  power  which  is  supposed  to  have 
created  was  unable  to  make  the  perfect  creation  which  the 
hypothesis  of  infinite  benevolence  calls  for.  Infinite  good- 
ness fails  to  be  demonstrated  by  a  world  that  is  full  of 
misery,  caused  by  special  appliances  to  bring  it  about ;  and 
infinite  power  can  not  have  existed,  unless  it  comprehended 
the  power  to  produce  perfect  and  universal  happiness. 

I  pass  entirely  aside  from  the  argument  which  is  drawn 
from  the  supposed  manifestations  of  Almighty  power  in  the 
creation  of  diversified  forms  of  animal  and  vegetable  life, 
because  that  argument  leads  doubtless  to  the  inquiry  wheth- 
er the  Almighty  made  these  manifestations  to  demonstrate 
his  power  to  himself,  or  made  them  to  demonstrate  it  to 
his  human  creatures.  Admitting  the  faot,  as  Mr.  Spencer 
puts  it,  that  millions  of  these  demonstrations  took  place  on 
earth  when  there  were  no  intelligent  beings  to  contemplate 
them — a  statement  that  is  said  to  be  verified  by  the  deduc- 
tions of  geology  and  paleontology — an  inquiry  into  the 
period  or  the  purpose  of  these  manifestations  of  divine 

♦  This  is  given  almost  verbatim  from  Mr.  Spencer's  "  Biology,"  i,  p. 
840  a  seq. 


148  CREATIOI^  OR  EVOLUTION? 

power  as  manifestations  only,  merely  leads  us  into  some  of 
the  arguments  of  the  current  theology.  There  is  another 
realm  of  thought  and  reasoning  into  which  it  will  he  far 
more  profitable  to  enter.  It  is  that  realm  which  lies  out- 
side of  tradition  and  the  teachings  of  theologians,  and 
which  takes  the  hypothesis  of  infinite  power  and  infinite 
goodness,  not  as  something  which  we  have  been  taught  to 
believe,  but  as  a  postulate  of  philosophical  reasoning ;  and, 
applying  this  hypothesis  to  the  known  facts  of  the  animal 
and  vegetable  world,  endeavors  to  ascertain  whether  these 
facts  necessarily  create  an  insuperable  difficulty  in  the  hy- 
pothesis which  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  sound  reasoning  on 
the  subject.  For  I  must  again  insist,  and  shall  endeavor 
specifically  to  show,  that  this  hypothesis  of  infinite  power 
and  goodness  is  equally  necessary  to  the  evolutionist  and 
to  the  believer  in  special  creations,  unless  all  speculation 
on  the  genesis  of  the  world  is  to  end  in  blind  chance,  and 
the  negation  of  a  personal  creating  power  of  any  kind. 

What,  then,  is  the  true  philosophical  mode  of  dealing 
with  the  existence  in  the  world  of  physical  and  moral  evil, 
in  reference  to  the  hypothesis  of  infinite  power  and  infinite 
goodness  ?  I  do  not  ask  what  is  a  perfect  demonstration 
of  the  problem  of  physical  and  moral  evil — although  I 
think  that  the  natural  solution  is  very  near  to  demonstra- 
tion ;  but  the  inquiry  which  I  now  make  is,  What  is  the 
reasonable  mode  of  comparing  the  existence  of  suffering, 
pain,  misery,  and  their  immediate  agencies,  with  the  sup- 
position of  an  all-wise,  all-powerful,  and  perfectly  benefi- 
cent Creator  ?  * 

*  In  treating  of  the  existence  of  physical  and  moral  evil,  I  do  not  mean 
to  include  sin  in  the  discussion.  I  mean  now  by  moral  evil  that  loss  or 
diminution  of  happiness,  for  the  individual  or  a  race,  which  results  from 
physical  evil  produced  by  causes  for  which  the  sufferer  is  not  responsible. 
The  sin  that  is  in  the  world  is  a  matter  that  is  to  be  considered  entirely 
with  reference  to  the  accountability  of  man  as  a  moral  being;  and  the 


SUM  TOTAL  OF  EVIL  AND  HAPPINESS.        149 

What  we  have  to  do,  in  the  first  place,  is  to  contemplate 
the  scope  of  infinite  goodness  ;  or,  in  other  words,  to  con- 
sider that  infinite  benevolence  is,  in  its  very  nature,  guided 
by  unerring  wisdom,  and  consequently  that  its  methods, 
its  plans,  and  its  results  are  as  far  beyond  the  methods, 
plans,  and  results  which  our  imperfect  benevolence  would 
adopt  or  achieve,  as  infinite  power  is  beyond  our  finite  and 
imperfect  capacity.  This  does  not  call  upon  us  to  conceive 
of  something  that  is  inconceivable,  or  that  can  not  be  rep- 
resented in  thought ;  for  power  and  goodness  are  qualities 
that  we  know  to  exist :  we  know  that  they  exist  in  degrees  ; 
and  that  what  exists  in  a  measurable  and  limited  degree 
may  exist  without  measurable  limitation,  or  in  absolute 
perfection.  The  philosophic  mode  of  regarding  perfect 
goodness  requires  us  to  consider  its  methods  and  results 
with  reference  to  its  perfect  character,  and  not  to  measure 
them  by  the  inferior  standards  of  human  wisdom.  Follow- 
ing out  this  obvious  truth,  we  have  next  to  inquire  whether 
the  physical  and  moral  evil  which  we  see  ought  to  destroy 
the  very  idea  of  an  infinitely  benevolent  Creator,  and  to 
compel  us  to  regard  him  as  a  malevolent  being,  or  else  to 
destroy  our  belief  in  his  infinite  power,  because  his  power 
has  been  unable  to  make  a  world  of  perfect  happiness  and 
enjoyment  for  his  creatures.  If  this  dilemma  seriously 
exists,  it  is  just  as  great  a  difficulty  for  the  hypothesis  of 
evolution  as  it  is  for  that  of  special  creations,  and  it  drives 
both  schools  into  the  utter  negation  of  any  intelligent 
causing  power  adequate  to  produce  what  we  see. 

In  the  next  place,  let  us  see  what  is  the  sum  total  of 
the  physical  and  moral  evil  in  the  animal  kingdom,  which, 
in  reference  to  the  sum  total  of  happiness,  is  supposed  to 


reasons  which  may  be  assigned  for  its  permission  may  be  quite  distinct 
from  those  which  relate  to  the  existence  of  physical  suffering  for  which 
man  is  not  responsible  upon  any  rational  theory  of  moral  accountability. 


150  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

create  this  formidable  impeacliment  of  the  Almighty  benev- 
olence on  the  one  hand,  or  of  the  Almighty  power  on  the 
other.  As  to  the  order  of  things  which  permits  the  supe- 
rior animals  to  prey  upon  the  inferior,  there  is  an  explana- 
tion which  lies  on  the  surface  of  the  facts,  and  which 
would  seem  to  satisfy  all  the  requirements  of  philosophic 
reasoning,  whatever  may  be  the  mode  in  which  this  part 
of  the  moral  problem  is  dealt  with  by  theologians.  We 
find  the  fact  to  be  that,  as  we  rise  higher  and  higher  in 
the  scale  of  organized  beings,  the  superior  are  capable  of 
happiness  in  a  greater  degree  than  the  inferior,  in  some 
proportion  to  the  superiority  of  their  organization.  The 
comparative  duration  of  life  among  the  different  animals 
also  enters  into  the  estimate  of  the  sum  total  of  happiness. 
As  a  general  rule,  the  inferior  organizations  are  individu- 
ally more  short-lived  than  the  superior.  Now,  it  might 
have  pleased  the  Creator  to  cause  all  animals  to  be  fed 
by  manna  from  heaven,  or  to  find  their  sustenance  only 
in  vegetable  products ;  and  he  could  thus  have  dispensed 
with  the  carnivorous  appetite,  and  have  rendered  it  unne- 
cessary for  the  superior  to  prey  upon  and  destroy  the  infe- 
rior. But,  although  he  could  thus  have  made  a  world  from 
which  the  misery  of  this  perpetual  carnage  would  have 
been  absent,  and  which  would  have  been  so  far  a  world  of 
perfect  happiness,  the  fact  is  that  this  law  of  universal  de- 
struction is  so  shaped  as  to  follow  the  increasing  capacity 
for  happiness  and  enjoyment  which  moves  through  the  as- 
cending scale  of  the  organized  beings.  It  also  follows  an- 
other obvious  purpose  of  the  carnivorous  appetite  and  of 
the  permission  to  indulge  it.  A  large  part  of  the  whole 
animal  kingdom  is  so  constructed  that  sustentation  requires 
animal  food.  The  blood,  the  tissues,  the  whole  substance 
of  some  animal  structures  require  to  be  renewed  by  similar 
substances  ;  and  although  life  may  sometimes  be  continued 
by  the  assimilation  of  vegetable  substances  alone,  it  is  not 


PARASITES.  151 

the  life  for  which  the  animal  was  formed,  because  it  is  not 
always  the  life  which  makes  the  full  end  of  its  being,  and 
realizes  its  best  capacity  for  enjoyment  and  for  the  contin- 
uation of  its  species.  In  some  cases,  the  carnivorous  appe- 
tite is  withheld.  The  animal  lives  and  thrives  best  upon  a 
vegetable  diet,  and  so  far  as  the  flesh  of  these  animals  en- 
ters into  the  wholesome  and  beneficial  food  of  man,  the 
animal  fulfills  one  purpose  of  its  existence.  Some  animals, 
before  they  become  fit  food  for  man,  have  been  nourished 
by  the  substance  of  still  other  animals.  In  all  this  variety 
of  modes  in  which  animal  food  is  prepared  for  man,  and  in 
the  whole  of  the  stupendous  economy  by  which  the  supe- 
rior organizations  prey  upon  the  inferior  in  order  that  each 
species  may  continue  itself  and  may  fulfill  the  purposes  of 
its  existence,  we  may  without  any  difficulty  trace  an  obvious 
reason  for  the  permission  that  has  been  given  to  such  destruc- 
tion of  individual  life.  When  to  the  sum  total  of  happiness 
and  benefit  which  this  permission  bestows  on  each  of  the 
orders  of  the  inferior  animals  according  to  its  capacity  for 
enjoyment,  whether  it  does  or  does  not  enter  into  the  food 
of  man,  whether  it  comes  or  never  comes  within  the  reach 
of  his  arm,  we  add  the  sum  total  of  happiness  and  benefit 
which  this  law  of  universal  destruction  bestows  on  man,  so 
far  as  he  avails  himself  of  it,  we  shall  find  no  reason  to  im- 
peach the  Divine  Goodness  or  to  adopt  a  conclusion  deroga- 
tory to  the  Infinite  Power.  We  may  dismiss  the  difficulty 
that  is  supposed  to  arise  from  the  warfare  of  the  superior 
upon  the  inferior  beings,  because  that  warfare,  when  we 
trace  it  through  all  its  stages,  involves  no  sort  of  deduction 
from  the  perfect  character  of  the  Divine  Goodness  or  the 
Divine  Power. 

Next,  we  come  to  the  liability  of  animals,  man  included, 
to  be  preyed  upon  by  parasites,  creatures  of  a  very  inferior 
order  when  compared  to  the  animals  which  they  infest.  I 
have  looked  in  vain  through  Mr.  Spencer's  speculations  for 


152  CREATIOIT  OR  EVOLUTION? 

any  explanation  which  makes  the  existence  of  the  parasitic 
animals  a  support  to  the  theory  of  evolution  without  in- 
volving the  same  impeachment  of  the  Divine  Power  or 
the  Divine  Goodness  which  is  supposed  to  be  involved  in  the 
hypothesis  of  special  creations.  We  are  indeed  told  that 
evolution  brings  about  an  increasing  amount  of  happiness, 
all  evils  being  but  incidental ;  that,  applying  alike  to  the 
lowest  and  to  the  highest  forms  of  organization,  there  is 
in  all  cases  a  progressive  adaptation,  and  a  survival  of  the 
fittest.  *^If,"  it  is  argued,  **in  the  uniform  working  of 
the  process,  there  are  evolved  organisms  of  low  types,  which 
prey  on  those  of  higher  types,  the  evils  inflicted  form  but  a 
deduction  from  the  average  benefits.  The  universal  and 
necessary  tendency  toward  supremacy  and  multiplication  of 
the  best,  applying  to  the  organic  creation  as  a  whole  as  well 
as  to  each  species,  is  ever  diminishing  the  damage  done, 
tends  ever  to  maintain  those  most  superior  organizations 
which,  in  one  way  or  another,  escape  the  invasions  of  the 
inferior,  and  so  tends  to  produce  a  type  less  liable  to  the 
invasions  of  the  inferior.  Thus  the  evils  accompanying 
evolution  are  ever  being  self-eliminated."  * 

Admitting,  for  the  argument's  sake,  that  this  is  true, 
how  does  the  hypothesis  of  evolution  meet  the  difiiculty  ? 
The  parasitic  inferior  organizations  exist,  and  they  have 
existed,  more  or  less,  as  long  as  we  have  known  anything 
of  the  superior  organizations  on  which  they  prey.  They 
have  inflicted  and  still  inflict  an  incalculable  amount  of 
evil,  an  untold  diminution  of  the  happiness  that  might 
have  been  enjoyed  if  they  had  never  existed.  The  mode  in 
which  they  came  into  existence,  whether  by  the  process  of 
evolution  or  by  special  creations  of  their  respective  forms, 
does  not  affect  the  amount  of  evil  which  their  ravages  have 
produced  and  are  still  producing.     If  they  exist  under  an 

*  "Biology,"!,  p.  854. 


ELIMINATION   OF  EVIL.  153 

order  of  things  which  has  made  them  the  products  of  an 
evolving  process  that  has  formed  them  out  of  still  lower 
types,  while  they  exist  they  have  the  same  power  of  inflict- 
ing evil  as  if  they  had  been  specially  made  in  their  respect- 
ive types  without  the  former  existence  of  any  other  type. 
If  they  owe  their  existence  to  the  process  of  evolution,  they 
exist  under  a  system  that  was  designed  to  lead  to  their 
production  by  the  operation  of  uniform  laws  working  out 
a  uniform  process  ;  and  under  this  process,  so  long  as  they 
are  produced  by  it,  they  imply  gratuitous  malevolence,  just 
as  truly  as  they  do  if  they  are  supposed  to  have  been  spe- 
cially created.  The  evils  which  they  have  inflicted  and  still 
inflict  were  deliberately  inflicted,  unless  we  suppose  that  the 
hypothetical  process  of  evolution  was  not  a  system  ordained 
by  any  supreme  and  superhuman  power,  but  was  a  result  of 
blind  chance  ;  that  the  system  was  not  created,  but,  without 
the  volition  of  any  power  whatever,  grew  out  of  nothing. 

The  compensating  tendency  of  the  evolution  system  to 
evolve  superior  organisms,  which  in  one  way  or  other  "  will 
escape  the  parasitic  invasions,"  by  becoming  less  liable  to 
them,  and  so  to  diminish  the  damage  done,  as  a  sum  total, 
finds  a  corresponding  result  in  the  system  of  special  crea- 
tions by  a  different  process  and  at  a  more  rapid  rate.  For 
the  hypothesis  of  special  creations,  rightly  regarded,  does 
not  assume  the  special  creation  of  each  individual  animal 
as  a  miraculous  or  semi-miraculous  interposition  of  divine 
power ;  and  even  when  we  apply  it  to  the  lowest  types  of 
animals  it  implies  only  the  formation  of  that  type  with  the 
power  in  most  cases  of  continuing  its  species.  Assuming 
the  parasitic  animals  to  be  in  this  sense  special  creations, 
the  superior  organisms  on  which  they  prey  during  their 
existence  may  become  less  liable  to  their  invasions  by  an 
infinity  of  causes  which  will  diminish  and  finally  put  an 
end  to  the  parasitic  ravages.  In  the  progress  of  medical  sci- 
ence man  may  be  wholly  relieved  from  the  worst  and  most 


154  OREATIOIS-  OR  EVOLUTION? 

obscure  parasites  that  have  ever  infested  him,  without  vsrait- 
ing  for  their  evolution  into  some  other  type  of  animal  that 
does  not  desire  or  need  to  prey  upon  the  human  system,  or 
without  waiting  to  have  the  human  organism  developed 
into  one  that  will  not  be  exposed  to  such  causes  of  suffering 
or  death.  We  know  already  that  very  simple  precautions 
will  ward  off  from  man  some  of  the  most  subtle  of  these 
enemies  ;  and  even  in  the  case  of  animals  lower  than  man 
we  know  that  instinct  teaches  them  how  to  avoid  the  rav- 
ages of  some  of  the  parasites  to  which  they  are  exposed,  even 
if  there  are  others  which  they  can  not  now  escape. 

So  that,  viewing  as  a  whole  the  amount  of  misery  in- 
flicted by  the  inferior  organisms  upon  the  superior,  and  look- 
ing from  the  first  forward  to  the  last  ''syllable  of  recorded 
time,"  we  are  able  upon  either  of  the  two  hypotheses  re- 
specting the  origin  of  animals  to  reach  certain  definite  con- 
clusions, which  may  be  stated  as  follows  :  This  world  was 
not  intended  to  be  a  state  of  unmixed  and  unbroken  indi- 
vidual happiness  for  any  of  the  animal  organisms.  Death 
for  every  individual  in  some  form  was  necessary  to  the  car- 
rying on  and  the  carrying  out  of  the  scheme  of  average  en- 
joyment and  the  accomplishment  of  a  sum  total  of  benefit 
that  becomes  larger  and  larger  as  time  goes  on  ;  and,  al- 
though death  without  suffering  might  have  been  ordained, 
the  moral  purpose  for  which  suffering  was  allowed  to  pre- 
cede death  required  that  it  should  be  permitted  in  num- 
berless cases  and  forms,  and  by  almost  numberless  agencies, 
although  not  always  made  necessary.  This  great  purpose 
can  be  discerned  without  taking  into  view  at  all  the  idea  of 
a  future  state  of  existence  for  man  or  any  of  the  other  ter- 
restrial beings,  and  looking  only  at  the  moral  development 
of  man  individually  and  collectively  as  an  agent  in  the  pro- 
motion of  happiness  on  this  earth.  Man,  however  he  origi- 
nated, stands  at  the  head  of  the  whole  animal  kingdom. 
If  for  himself  and  for  all  the  inferior  animal  organisms 


BENEFITS  OF  SUFFERING.  155 

death  without  suffering  had  been  ordained  as  the  universal 
rule,  he  would  have  been  without  the  full  strength  of  the 
moral  stimulus  which  now  leads  him  to  relieve,  to  palliate, 
to  diminish,  and,  as  far  as  possible,  to  terminate  every  kind 
of  suffering  for  himself  and  the  superior  organisms  that  are 
below  him  in  the  scale,  which  are  the  most  capable  of  en- 
joyment and  happiness,  next  after  himself,  in  their  various 
proportionate  capacities.  He  would  have  had  no  strong 
motive  for  exterminating  the  inferior  and  noxious  organ- 
isms excepting  for  his  own  individual  and  immediate  bene- 
fit ;  no  reason  for  extending  the  protection  of  his  scientific 
acquirements  to  the  lower  animals  excepting  to  promote  his 
own  immediate  advantage.  Human  society  would  have 
been  without  that  approach  to  moral  perfection  which  is 
indicated  by  a  tenderness  for  life  in  all  its  forms,  where  its 
destruction  is  not  needed  by  some  controlling  necessity  or 
expediency,  and  by  the  alleviation  of  suffering  in  all  its 
forms  for  the  sake  of  increasing  the  sum  total  of  possible 
happiness.  Human  life  itself  would  have  been  less  sacred 
in  human  estimation  if  there  had  been  no  suffering  to  draw 
forth  our  sympathies  and  to  stimulate  us  to  the  utmost  con- 
tention against  its  evils.  Civilization  would  have  been  des- 
titute of  that  which  is  now  its  highest  and  noblest  attri- 
bute. Wars  would  have  been  more  frequent  among  the 
most  advanced  portions  of  the  human  race  ;  pestilence 
would  not  have  been  encountered  with  half  the  vigor  or  the 
skill  which  now  wage  battle  against  it ;  poverty  would  have 
been  left  to  take  care  of  itself,  or  would  have  been  alleviated 
from  only  the  lowest  and  most  selfish  motives,  which  would 
have  left  half  its  evils  to  be  aggravated  by  neglect.  As  the 
world  has  been  constituted,  and  as  we  have  the  strongest 
reason  to  believe  it  will  continue  to  the  end,  there  is  to  be 
added  to  the  immeasurable  sum  of  mere  animal  enjoyment 
of  life  that  other  immeasurable  sum  of  moral  happiness 
which  man  derives  from  doing  good  and  from  the  cultiva- 


156  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

tion  of  his  power  to  do  it — an  acquisition  and  accumulation 
of  benefit  which  would  have  been  wanting  if  there  had 
been  no  physical  suffering  to  awaken  pity  and  to  prompt 
our  exertions  for  its  relief. 

So  that  the  objection  that  the  hypothesis  of  infinite 
goodness  required  a  world  where  physical  pain  would  have 
been  unknown  to  any  of  its  organisms,  where  human  sor- 
row would  never  have  been  felt,  where  human  tears  would 
have  never  flowed,  and  where  death  would  have  been 
always  and  only  euthanasia,  is  by  no  manner  of  means  a 
necessary  conclusion,  as  the  existence  of  suffering  is  no  im- 
peachment of  the  Infinite  Power.  If  we  consider  man  only 
in  the  light  of  his  rank  at  the  head  of  all  the  terrestrial 
beings,  and  as  therefore  capable  of  the  greatest  amount  of 
benefit,  to  himself  and  to  the  other  creatures,  and  if  we  re- 
gard him  individually  as  nothing  more  than  a  being  dwell- 
ing on  this  earth  for  a  short-lived  existence  and  endowed 
with  the  power  of  perpetuating  his  species,  he  would  have 
been  morally  an  inferior  being  to  what  he  is  now  capable 
of  becoming,  and  human  society  would  have  been  far  below 
what  it  can  be  made  and  what  we  know  that  to  a  large 
degree  it  already  is,  if  physical  suffering  had  been  excluded 
from  the  world.  All  this  can  be  discerned  without  the  aid 
of  revelation  ;  it  can  be  seen  by  the  eye  of  philosophic  rea- 
son alone ;  and  it  is  all  equally  true  upon  any  hypothesis 
of  the  physical  origin  of  man  or  any  other  living  creature 
on  this  earth,  unless  we  suppose  that  the  whole  animal 
kingdom  came  into  being  without  any  intentional  design, 
without  any  plan  of  intentional  benefit,  without  any  pur- 
pose, and  without  the  conscious  exertion  of  any  power  of 
any  kind. 

And,  if  the  question  is  asked.  What  is  to  be  the  end  of 
this  world  ?  or  if  we  go  forward  in  imagination  toward  the 
probable  end  of  all  this  animal  life,  I  can  not  see  that  the 
hypothesis  of  evolution  has  more  to  recommend  it  than  the 


FIN-ALITY   OF  SPECIES.  157 

hypothesis  of  special  creations  in  reference  to  the  perfecti- 
bility of  the  world,  or  to  the  sum  of  approximate  perfec- 
tion that  seems  to  be  attainable.  As,  upon  either  of  the 
two  hypotheses,  a  perfect  world  does  not  even  now  seem  to 
have  demanded  an  absence  of  suffering,  since  suffering  tends 
obviously  to  produce  greater  benefit  than  could  have  fol- 
lowed from  its  absence,  so,  in  the  remotest  conceivable  fu- 
ture, a  nearer  and  nearer  approximation  to  a  state  of  uni- 
versal happiness  will  continue  to  be  worked  out  by  physical 
and  moral  causes,  which  will  be  as  potent  under  the  system 
of  special  creations  as  they  can  be  supposed  to  be  under  the 
system  of  evolution.  It  is  true  that  the  moral  causes  will 
supplement  and  aid  the  physical  under  either  of  the  two  sys- 
tems. But  one  difficulty  with  the  evolution  theory  as  the 
sole  method  by  which  the  past  or  present  inhabitants  of  the 
world  have  come  into  existence  is  that,  so  far  as  we  can 
judge,  it  has  done  and  completed  its  work  just  as  effectu- 
ally and  finally  as  special  creation  appears  to  have  termi- 
nated in  certain  forms,  some  of  which  are  extinct  and  some 
of  which  are  living.  Take  the  Darwinian  pedigree  of  man, 
as  stated  in  a  former  chapter,  or  any  other  mode  of  tracing 
the  supposed  stages  of  animal  evolution.  The  process  has 
hypothetically  culminated  in  man.  At  whatever  species  in 
the  ascending  scale  yon  pause,  you  find  that  the  particular 
type  of  animal  has  either  become  extinct  or  that  it  has  con- 
tinued and  still  continues  to  be  produced  in  that  same  type, 
with  only  such  variations  and  incidental  differences  as  have 
resulted  from  changed  conditions  of  life,  and  from  the  in- 
termingling of  different  breeds  of  the  same  animal.  I  do 
not  now  speak  of  the  theory,  which  admits,  of  course,  of 
the  hypothetical  development  of  every  known  animal,  past 
or  present,  out  of  its  supposed  predecessors.  But  I  speak 
of  the  facts  as  yet  revealed  by  the  researches  of  naturalists 
among  all  the  extinct  and  living  forms  of  animal  life.  If 
there  had  ever  been  discovered  any  one  instance  in  which 


158  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

it  could  be  claimed  by  satisfactory  proof  that  an  animal  of 
a  distinct  species  had  been  evolyed  out  of  races  of  animals 
of  a  fundamentally  different  organization,  and  without  the 
special  interposition  of  any  creating  power  operating  to 
make  a  new  organism,  we  should  certainly  have  it  cited 
and  relied  upon  as  a  fact  of  the  utmost  importance.  I  do 
not  say  that  it  would  be  reasonable  to  expect  direct  and 
ocular  demonstration  of  such  a  product,  any  more  than  it 
would  be  reasonable  to  expect  direct  and  ocular  demon- 
stration of  an  act  of  special  creation.  But  I  say  that  it 
could  be  shown  by  proofs  that  ought  to  be  satisfactory  if 
there  were  any  evidence  from  which  the  inference  that 
such  a  fact  ever  occurred  could  be  reasonably  drawn  ;  just 
as  it  is  possible  to  draw  the  inference  of  special  creation  by 
reasonable  deduction  from  the  evidence  that  tends  to  estab- 
lish it  as  a  safe  conclusion.  But  if  there  has  ever  been  such 
an  instance  of  the  evolution  of  any  known  species  of  ani- 
mal out  of  other  species  shown  by  satisfactory  proof,  or  if 
we  assume  such  an  occurrence  in  the  past  as  the  theory 
calls  for,  what  reason  have  we  to  suppose  that  the  process 
of  evolution  is  still  going  on,  and  to  expect  it  to  go  on  to 
the  end  of  time  ?  We  must  judge  of  the  future  by  the 
past,  for  we  have  no  other  means  of  judging  it.  The  past 
and  the  present  both  show,  so  far  as  we  can  yet  perceive  by 
the  facts,  that  each  distinct  and  peculiar  type  of  animal 
life  remains  a  perfect  and  completed  production,  however 
it  was  fashioned  or  grew  into  that  type  ;  and  that,  so  far  as 
we  have  any  means  of  actual  knowledge,  no  crosses  of  dif- 
ferent races  of  that  animal  produce  anything  but  incidental 
variations  of  structure  and  mode  of  life.  It  is  a  mere  hy- 
pothesis that  they  produce  distinct  species. 

Apply  this  to  the  most  important  of  the  supposed  con- 
nections between  different  animals  according  to  the  theory 
of  evolution — that  between  man  and  the  monkey.  The 
theory  calls  for  the  intermediate  link  or  links.    Nothing 


FINALITY  OF  SPECIES.  159 

can  be  yet  found  that  shows  the  pedigree  without  eking  it 
out  by  general  reasoning,  and  by  assumptions  that  are  more 
or  less  imaginary.  But  suppose  that  the  chain  of  proof 
were  complete,  what  would  it  show  ?  It  would  show  that 
the  process  of  evolution  has  culminated  in  man,  as  its 
crown  and  summit,  and  has  there  stopped.  For,  whateyer 
may  have  been  the  length  of  time  required  for  the  produc- 
tion of  this  result,  we  know  what  the  product  is.  "We  have 
the  history  of  man  as  an  animal  for  a  period  of  time  that  has 
been  quite  long  enough  to  show  that,  after  he  had  become 
in  his  essential  structure  as  an  animal  what  we  know  him 
to  be,  no  subsequent  intermingling  of  the  races  or  families 
into  which  the  species  became  divided  has  produced  any 
change  in  his  essential  structure,  or  any  new  organs  or  any 
differences  but  differences  in  the  development  of  powers 
which  are  to  be  found  in  him  at  all  the  stages  of  his  known 
existence  as  parts  of  his  characteristic  animal  structure. 
The  period  of  his  known  existence  is  certainly  infinitely 
small  when  compared  with  the  whole  indefinite  future.  It 
is  long  enough,  however,  to  afford  some  basis  of  reasoning 
about  the  future  ;  and,  short  as  it  is,  it  tends  very  strongly 
to  show  that  the  further  development  of  man  on  earth  is 
to  be  chiefly  a  moral  and  intellectual  development ;  that 
in  physical  structure  he  is  a  completed  type  ;  and  that  what- 
ever superiorities  of  mere  animal  life  he  may  attain  to  here- 
after are  to  be  such  improvements  as  can  be  worked  out, 
within  the  limits  of  his  animal  constitution,  by  the  science 
which  his  accumulating  experience  and  knowledge  will  en- 
able him  to  apply  to  the  physical  and  moral  well-being  of 
his  race. 

To  return  now  to  the  line  of  thought  from  which  these 
suggestions  have  diverged.  If,  as  we  have  every  reason  to 
believe  upon  either  hypothesis  of  man's  origin,  he  is  a  com- 
pleted animal,  standing  by  original  creation  or  by  the  effect 
of  the  evolution  process  at  the  head  of  the  whole  animal 


160  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

kingdom  iu  the  apparent  purpose  of  his  existence,  his 
agency  and  his  power  in  promoting  the  sum  of  happiness 
on  earth,  for  himself  and  all  the  other  animals,  are  the 
same  upon  either  hypothesis  of  his  origin.  The  hypothesis 
of  his  origin  by  evolution  gives  him  no  greater  power  over 
his  own  happiness  or  that  of  the  other  creatures  than  he 
has  if  we  suppose  him  to  have  been  specially  created  ;  and 
it  is  only  by  adopting  the  belief  that  in  his  own  constitu- 
tion he  is  to  be  hereafter  developed  into  a  being  incapable 
of  suffering,  or  one  vastly  less  capable  of  suffering  than  the 
animal  called  man  now  is,  that  the  theory  of  evolution, 
even  in  regard  to  the  sum  total  of  happiness  on  earth,  has 
any  advantage  over  the  theory  of  special  creations.  If  we 
suppose  the  future  gradual  development  of  a  terrestrial 
being  standing  still  higher  in  the  animal  scale  than  man 
now  stands,  exempt  from  the  suffering  which  man  now 
suffers,  we  have  a  great  amount  of  suffering  hereafter 
eliminated  from  the  world  by  a  certain  process.  But  how 
does  this  better  satisfy  the  idea  of  infinite  goodness  in  the 
power  that  devised  the  process,  than  the  hypothesis  of 
special  creation  which  has  formed  man  as  an  ultimate  prod- 
uct of  the  divine  benevolence  and  power  acting  together, 
endowed  him  with  the  faculty  of  eliminating  pain  and  evil 
from  the  circumstances  of  his  existence,  by  his  own  exer- 
tions, and  furnished  him  with  the  strongest  motives  as  well 
as  with  almost  immeasurable  means  for  diminishing  the 
amount  of  evil  for  himself  and  all  the  other  beings  within 
his  reach  ? 

5.  Another  of  the  specific  objections  urged  by  Mr.  Spen- 
cer against  the  doctrine  of  special  creations  is  so  put  that 
it  is  manifestly  directed  against  one  of  the  positions  as- 
sumed by  the  representatives  of  the  current  theology.  The 
learned  philosopher  begins  this  part  of  his  argument  by 
imputing  to  those  who  assert  this  doctrine  as  their  reason 
for  maintaining  it,  that  it  "  honors  the  Unknown  Cause  of 


HONORING  OR  DISHONORING  THE  CREATOR.  161 

things,"  and  that  they  think  any  other  doctrine  amounts 
to  an  exclusion  of  divine  power  from  the  world.  To  en- 
counter this  supposed  reason  for  maintaining  the  doctrine 
of  special  creations,  he  proceeds  to  ask  whether  the  divine 
power  *' would  not  have  been  still  better  demonstrated  by 
the  separate  creation  of  each  individual  than  it  is  by  the 
separate  creation  of  each  species  ?  Why  should  there  exist 
this  process  of  natural  generation  ?  "Why  should  not  om- 
nipotence have  been  proved  by  the  supernatural  production, 
of  plants  and  animals  everywhere  throughout  the  world 
from  hour  to  hour  ?  Is  it  replied  that  the  Creator  was  able 
to  make  individuals  arise  from  one  another  in  natural  selec- 
tion, but  not  to  make  species  thus  arise  ?  This  is  to  assign 
a  limit  to  power  instead  of  magnifying  it.  Is  it  replied 
that  the  occasional  miraculous  origination  of  a  species  was 
practicable,  but  that  the  perpetual  miraculous  origination 
of  countless  individuals  was  impracticable  ?  This  also  is  a 
derogation.  Either  it  was  possible  or  not  possible  to  create 
species  and  individuals  after  the  same  general  methods. 
To  say  that  it  was  not  possible  is  suicidal  in  those  who  use 
this  argument ;  and,  if  it  was  possible,  it  is  required  to  say 
what  end  is  served  by  the  special  creation  of  species  that 
would  not  be  better  served  by  the  special  creation  of  indi- 
viduals ?  "  *  I  must  again  disclaim  any  participation  in  the 
views  of  those  who  contemplate  this  question  with  reference 
to  the  manifestations  of  divine  power  by  one  method  of  its 
supposed  action  or  another,  or  who  are  influenced  by  the 
idea  of  honoring  or  dishonoring  the  Creator.  This  is  not 
a  question  of  the  mode  in  which  the  Creator  has  chosen  to 
manifest  his  power  for  the  purpose  of  making  it  more  im- 
pressive in  the  eyes  of  his  intelligent  human  creatures 
or  more  palpable  to  their  perceptions.  Nor  is  it  a  ques- 
tion, excepting  for  the  theologian  who  begins  to  reason 

*"Biology,"i,  p.  339. 


162  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

upon  it  from  a  peculiar  point  of  view,  by  what  belief  we 
best  honor  the  Creator,  or  the  power  which  Mr.  Spencer 
describes  as  the  "Unknown  Cause."  In  the  eye  of  philo- 
sophic reason,  apart  from  all  the  religious  dogmas  that 
have  been  taught  by  human  interpretations  of  revelation, 
this  is  a  question  of  the  probable  mode  in  which  the  assumed 
omnipotent  power  has  acted ;  and  it  is  not  a  question  of 
how  we  can  best  honor  or  magnify  that  power  by  believing 
that  it  has  acted  in  one  mode  and  not  in  another.  TVe 
have  to  take,  first,  the  postulate  of  an  infinitely  powerful 
Creator,  whose  existence  is  an  independent  inquiry,  which 
we  are  to  make  out  upon  evidence  that  satisfies  the  mind. 
The  hypothesis  of  his  existence  and  attributes  includes  the 
power  to  create  species  and  to  establish  the  process  of  natu- 
ral generation  for  the  continuation  of  each  species,  or  the 
power  to  make  separate  creations  of  each  individual,  as  Mr. 
Spencer  phrases  it,  "from  hour  to  hour.''  In  either  mode 
of  action,  the  power  was  the  same.  It  is  no  derogation 
from  it  to  suppose  that  the  one  or  the  other  mode  was 
adopted.  It  is  no  augmentation  of  it  to  suppose  that  the 
one  was  adopted  instead  of  the  other.  It  is  simply  a  ques- 
tion of  what  does  the  evidence  show,  to  the  reasonable  sat- 
isfaction of  the  human  mind,  to  have  been  most  probably 
the  method  that  was  chosen  by  a  power  that  could  adopt 
any  method  whatever.  If  we  find  that  the  creation  of 
species  and  the  establishment  of  the  process  of  natural 
generation  for  the  multiplication  of  individuals  is  upon  the 
whole  sustained  by  a  predominating  weight  of  evidence,  it 
is  safe  to  adopt  the  belief  that  this  hypothesis  of  the  Al- 
mighty method  is  in  accordance  with  the  facts.  If  the  evi- 
dence fails  to  show  that  species  have  arisen  from  each  other 
in  the  same  way  that  individuals  have  arisen  from  each 
other  in  natural  succession,  we  have  no  reason  to  conclude 
that  such  has  been  the  fact.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the 
evidence  shows,  by  reasonably  satisfactory  proofs,  that  a 


EFFECTS  OF  BELIEF  IN  SPECIAL  CREATIONS.   163 

process  has  been  established  for  the  eyolution  of  distinct 
species  out  of  other  and  different  species,  similar  to  the 
process  by  which  individuals  arise  from  each  other  by  nat- 
ural generation,  it  will  be  safe  to  conclude  that  such  has 
been  the  fact.  Upon  either  hypothesis,  the  power  of  the 
Creator  remains  the  same. 

Nor  is  it  in  any  degree  necessary  to  consider  in  what 
sense  the  one  method  of  action  or  the  other  was  "  miracu- 
lous," or  that  the  one  was  an  occasional  and  the  other  a 
perpetual  exercise  of  power.  The  special  creations  of  in- 
dividuals from  hour  to  hour  would  be  just  as  miraculous  as 
the  special  creation  of  species,  and  it  would  be  occasional, 
although  the  occasions  would  be  indefinite  in  number.  The 
special  creation  of  species  would  be  just  as  miraculous  as 
the  special  creation  of  individuals,  but  the  occasional  exer- 
cise of  such  a  power  would  be  limited  by  the  number  of 
species,  each  of  which  would  be  a  finality  in  itself.  The 
dilemma  that  is  suggested  by  Mr.  Spencer  is  a  dilemma 
only  for  those  who  think  it  necessary  to  mingle  the  idea  of 
honoring  or  dishonoring  the  Creator  by  one  or  another 
mode  of  interpreting  his  works,  with  a  question  of  his 
probable  method  of  action.  His  method  of  action  is  to  be 
judged  upon  the  evidence  which  a  study  of  his  works  dis- 
closes. 

6.  Mr.  Spencer,  in  summing  up  his  objections  to  the 
doctrine  of  special  creations,  has  said  that  it  not  only  "fails 
to  satisfy  men's  intellectual  need  of  an  interpretation,"  but 
that  it  also  *'  fails  to  satisfy  their  moral  sentiment "  ;  that 
"their  moral  sentiment  is  much  better  satisfied  by  the  doc- 
trine of  evolution,  since  that  doctrine  raises  no  contradic- 
tory implications  respecting  the  Unknown  Cause,  such  as 
are  raised  by  the  antagonist  doctrine."  *  I  have  already  sug- 
gested what  seems  to  me  a  suflBcient  answer  to  the  supposed 

♦"Biology,"i,pp.  344,  855. 


164  CKEATION  OR  EYOLUTIOiT? 

contradictory  implications  respecting  the  goodness  and 
power  of  the  Almighty  Creator.  But  it  is  here  worthy  of 
the  further  inquiry,  What  has  been  the  influence  upon  the 
sacredness  of  human  life,  in  human  estimation,  of  a  belief 
in  any  other  theory  of  man's  origin,  or  of  no  belief  on  the 
subject,  compared  with  the  effect  of  a  belief  in  the  doctrine 
that  he  is  a  creature  of  an  Almighty  Creator,  formed  by  an 
exercise  of  infinite  power  for  the  enjoyment  of  greater  hap- 
piness on  earth  than  any  other  creature,  and  therefore  hav- 
ing a  peculiarly  sacred  individual  right  to  the  life  that  has 
been  given  to  him  ?  This,  to  be  sure,  does  not  afford  a 
direct  test  of  the  probable  truth  of  the  hypothesis  respect- 
ing his  origin.  But  the  answer  to  this  inquiry  will  afford 
some  test  of  the  claim  upon  our  consideration  that  may  be 
put  forward  for  any  other  hypothesis  than  the  one  that  em- 
braces the  full  idea  of  man's  special  creation,  even  if  we  do 
not  look  beyond  this  world.  Compare,  then,  the  civiliza- 
tion of  the  Romans  at  the  period  when  it  was  at  its  highest 
development  (the  age  of  Julius  and  Augustus  Caesar),  when 
in  many  respects  it  was  a  splendid  civilization.  Neither 
among  the  vulgar,  nor  among  the  most  cultivated ;  not 
among  the  most  accomplished  of  the  statesmen  or  philoso- 
phers, was  there  any  such  belief  as  the  simple  belief  in  the 
relation  between  Creator  and  creature,  such  as  had  been 
held  by  a  people  who  were  regarded  by  the  Eomans  as  bar- 
barians, in  respect  to  man  and  all  the  other  animals ;  or 
such  a  belief  as  is  now  held  by  the  least  educated  peasant 
of  modern  Europe.  One  consequence  of  the  absence  of  this 
belief,  or  of  the  want  of  a  vivid  perception  of  it,  was  that 
the  highest  persons  in  the  Eoman  state,  men  possessed  of 
all  the  culture  and  refinement  of  their  age,  not  only  fur- 
nished for  the  popular  amusement  combats  of  wild  beasts  of 
the  most  ferocious  natures,  but  they  provided  gladiatorial 
shows  in  which  human  beings,  trained  for  the  purpose,  were 
by  each  other  *'  butchered  to  make  a  Roman  holiday."   The 


EFFECTS  OF  BELIEF  IN  SPECIAL  CREATIONS.  165 

statesmen  who  thus  catered  to  the  popular  tastes,  and  never 
thought  of  correcting  them,  subjected  themselves  to  enor- 
mous expenses  for  the  purpose  ;  and  all  that  was  noble  and 
dignified  and  cultured  of  both  sexes,  as  well  as  the  rabble, 
looked  on  with  delight  at  the  horrid  spectaole.  But  this 
was  not  all.  The  Roman  law,  in  many  ways  a  code  of  ad- 
mirable ethics,  in  utter  disregard  of  the  natural  rights  of 
men,  left  the  life  of  the  slave  within  the  absolute  power  of 
the  master,  without  any  mitigation  of  the  existing  law  of 
nations  which  made  slaves  of  the  captive  in  war  and  his 
posterity.  Compare  all  this  with  the  civilization  of  any 
modern  country  in  which  the  life  or  liberty  of  man  can  be 
taken  away  only  by  judicial  process  and  public  authority, 
for  actual  crime  ;  in  which  institutions  exist  for  the  relief 
of  human  sufferiog  and  for  the  prevention  of  cruelty  to  the 
inferior  creatures  ;  and  then  say  whether  the  belief  in  spe- 
cial creations  is  not  a  doctrine  that  has  worked  vast  good 
in  the  world,  and  one  that  should  not  be  scouted  because 
it  is  a  "primitive  belief." 

Again,  compare  the  ages  in  modem  Europe  when  states- 
men and  politicians  of  the  highest  standing  with  entire 
impunity  employed  assassination  for  political  ends,  with 
periods  in  the  same  countries  when  assassination  had  come 
to  be  regarded  not  only  with  abhorrence,  but  as  incapable 
of  justification  for  any  end  whatever,  public  or  private,  and 
then  say  whether  the  world  can  lose  its  belief  that  man  is 
a  special  creation  of  God,  without  losing  one  of  the  strong- 
est safeguards  of  human  life  that  can  be  derived  from  any 
belief  on  the  subject.  All  these,  and  a  great  many  similar 
considerations,  while  they  do  not  prove  the  hypothesis  of 
special  creation,  show  strongly  that,  unlike  some  of  the 
family  of  beliefs  with  which  it  was  associated  in  the  darkest 
ages,  this  one  has  worked  no  mischiefs ;  that,  on  the  con- 
trary, it  has  been  producing  moral,  social,  and  political 
benefits  in  all  the  ages  in  which  it  has  been  most  vividly 


166  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

present  to  the  popular  faith.  The  command,  '*  Thou  shalt 
do  no  mnrder,"  from  whatever  source  it  came,  whether  it 
was  delivered  to  Moses  on  the  mount  of  fire,  or  came  from 
the  teachings  of  Nature  and  the  dictates  of  social  expedi- 
ency, whether  it  is  a  divine  or  a  human  law,  or  hoth,  has 
unhappily  heen  broken  in  all  times,  in  all  lands,  and  in 
all  conditions  of  civilization.  It  is  broken  still.  But  it 
has  never  yet  ceased,  for  its  moral  foundation  and  for  the 
moral  sanction  of  all  the  methods  which  have  aimed  to  en- 
force it,  to  rest  on  the  belief  that  man  is  peculiarly  the 
child  of  God,  whose  life  is  sacred  beyond  the  life  of  all 
other  creatures.  Whether  any  other  belief  of  man's  origin 
will  afford  an  equally  good  foundation  for  that  law,  is  a 
question  which  modem  scientific  speculation  may  or  may 
not  be  able  to  answer.  If  its  speculations  conduct  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  "unknown  cause"  has  not  specially 
caused  anything,  has  not  established  any  relation  of  Creator 
and  creature,  that  is  sufl&ciently  special  to  imply  divine 
care  for  the  creature,  we  know  what  the  answer  must  be. 
The  theologian  is  not  the  only  person  who  has  occasion  to 
examine  the  doctrine  of  evolution  ;  it  must  be  examined  by 
the  statesman  as  well. 


CHAPTER  V. 

The  doctrine  of  evolution  according  to  Herbert  Spencer  further  considered. 

In"  the  last  preceding  chapter,  I  have  examined  Mr. 
Spencer's  chief  objection  to  the  doctrine  of  special  creations 
when  considered  in  its  general  aspects.  I  now  advance  to 
the  general  aspects  of  the  evolution  hypothesis  as  applied 
by  this  philosopher  to  the  animal  kingdom.  I  have  already 
suggested  the  appropriate  answer  to  the  claim  that  the 
derivation  of  the  evolution  hypothesis  is  favorable  because 
it  has  originated  "among  the  most  instructed  class  and  in 
these  better-instructed  times,''  and  that  the  derivation  of 
the  other  hypothesis  is  unfavorable  because  "it  originated 
in  times  of  profound  ignorance."  On  this  point  it  is  un- 
necessary to  say  more.  But  there  is  a  supposed  "  kindred 
antithesis"  between  "  the  two  families  of  beliefs"  to  which 
these  two  hypotheses  are  said  respectively  to  belong  ;  one  of 
which  families  "has  been  dying  out,"  while  the  other 
family  "has  been  multiplying."  This  brings  into  view  the 
peculiar  philosophical  system  of  Mr.  Spencer,  by  which  he 
maintains  "the  unity  of  Nature,"  or  the  prevalence  of  a 
universal  law  of  evolution,  as  the  law  which  is  to  be  discerned 
in  remote  fields  of  inquiry,  and  which  "will  presently  be 
recognized  as  the  law  of  the  phenomena  which  we  are  here 
considering,"  namely,  the  phenomena  of  animal  life. 
"The  discovery  that  evolution  has  gone  on,  and  is  going 
on,  in  so  many  departments  of  Nature,  becomes  a  reason 


168  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

for  believing  that  there  is  no  department  of  Nature  in  which 
it  does  not  go  on."* 

In  considering  this  mode  of  generalization  it  is  impor- 
tant to  distinguish  between  the  phenomena  that  are  ob- 
servable in  those  departments  of  Nature  which  include  only 
dead  or  inanimate  matter,  and  the  phenomena  that  are 
peculiar  to  matter  organized  into  living  beings.  Again  :  it 
is  important  to  distinguish  between  phenomena  which  have 
been  influenced  by  human  agencies  and  those  which  can 
not  have  been  affected  by  the  power  of  man.  Another  dis- 
tinction of  the  greatest  consequence  is  that  which  divides 
the  phenomena  in  question  according  to  their  relation  to  a 
moral  purpose.  In  one  class  of  phenomena,  a  moral  pur- 
pose may  be  plainly  discovered  as  the  purpose  of  an  intelli- 
gent causing  power,  which  has  chosen  a  particular  means 
for  the  accomplishment  of  an  end.  In  another  class  of 
phenomena,  a  moral  purpose  may  not  be  discoverable  as 
the  end  for  which  the  existing  arrangement  of  things  was 
specially  designed,  and  to  which  that  arrangement  was  an 
indispensable  means.  By  classifying  the  departments  of 
Nature  and  observing  their  phenomena  with  these  discrimi- 
nations, we  shall  be  able  to  judge  of  the  value  of  Mr. 
Spencer's  philosophical  system  when  applied  to  the  animal 
kingdom. 

In  grouping  the  departments  and  their  respective  phe- 
nomena as  departments  in  which  the  law  of  evolution  has 
obtained,  and  in  drawing  from  them  the  sweeping  deduction 
that  there  is  no  department  in  which  this  law  has  not  ob- 
tained as  the  causa  causans,  Mr.  Spencer  does  not  appear 
to  have  made  these  necessary  discriminations.  He  specifies 
the  following  remote  fields  of  inquiry,  in  which  he  main- 
tains that  this  law  of  evolution  is  now  admitted  to  be  the 
solution  of  the  phenomena  that  lie  in  those  respective  fields  : 

*  "  Biology,"  i,  pp.  846-348  d  seq. 


IS  EVOLUTIO^f  THE   UNIVERSAL  LAW?         169 

First,  the  solar  system,  which,  as  he  asserts,  astronomers 
now  consider  has  been  gradually  evolved  out  of  diffused 
matter.*  Second,  geological  discoveries,  which  show  that 
the  earth  has  reached  its  present  varied  structure  through 
a  process  of  evolution.  Third,  society,  which  has  pro- 
gressed through  a  corresponding  process  of  gradual  develop- 
ment. "  Constitutions  are  not  made,  but  grow,"  is  said  to 
be  now  a  recognized  truth  among  "philosophical  politi- 
cians," and  a  part  of  the  more  general  truth  that  "societies 
are  not  made,  but  grow."  Fourth,  languages,  which,  we 
are  told,  are  now  believed  not  to  have  been  artificially  or 
supernaturally  formed,  but  to  have  been  developed.  Fi- 
nally, the  histories  of  religions,  philosophy,  science,  the  fine 
arts,  and  the  industrial  arts,  show,  it  is  said,  development 
"  through  as  unobtrusive  changes  as  those  which  the  mind 
of  a  child  passes  on  its  way  to  maturity."  f 

It  is  obvious  that  in  some  of  these  departments  neither 
human  agency  nor  the  human  will  and  choice  can  have  had 
any  influence  in  producing  the  phenomena,  while  in  some 
of  them  human  agency,  will,  and  choice  have  had  a  vast 
influence  in  making  the  phenomena  what  they  are.  That 
political  constitutions  or  social  institutions  are  not  made, 
but  grow,  is  a  dogma  that  is  by  no  means  universally  true, 
however  wise  it  may  sound,  or  with  whatever  confidence  in 
a  paradox  it  may  be  asserted  by  "  some  political  philoso- 
phers." While  past  events  and  present  exigencies  may 
have  largely  shaped  some  political  constitutions,  we  know 
that  others  have  been  deliberately  modified  by  a  choice  that 
has  had  more  or  less  of  a  free  scope,  and  that  sometimes  this 
has  amounted  to  an  arbitrary  decision.  Languages  may  or 
may  not  have  been  a  direct  and  supernatural  gift  from  Heav- 
en, but  we  know  that  their  structure  has  been  powerfully 

*  Concerning  the  nebular  hypothesis,  and  what  astronomers  now  con- 
sider, see  post.  f  "  Biology,"  L 


170  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

influenced  by  human  agencies,  when  they  have  come  to  be 
written  expressions  of  thought ;  for  they  have  then  received 
expansion  by  the  actual  coinage  of  new  words,  as  well  as  by 
new  meanings  of  old  words  ;  and  even  when  they  were  in  the 
first  stages  of  a  spoken  tongue,  inflections  that  were  purely 
arbitrary  have  been  introduced.  So  it  has  been  with  systems 
of  religion,  philosophy,  the  fine  arts,  the  mechanic  arts, 
legislation,  and  jurisprudence.  While  in  all  these  depart- 
ments changes  have  been  going  on,  which  upon  a  super- 
ficial view  appear  to  indicate  a  kind  of  spontaneous  devel- 
opment, when  they  are  analyzed  they  are  seen  to  have  been 
wholly  caused,  or  more  or  less  influenced,  by  the  genius, 
the  thought,  the  discoveries,  the  exertions,  and  the  acts  of 
particular  individuals  who  have  had  the  force  to  impress 
themselves  upon  the  age,  and  thus  to  make  new  systems, 
new  beliefs,  new  products,  new  rules  of  social  or  political 
life,  new  tastes,  and  new  habits  of  thinking  and  acting. 

Again  :  in  some  of  the  various  orders  of  phenomena 
which  are  found  in  these  different  departments,  there  is 
discernible  a  distinct  moral  purpose  in  the  shape  which 
they  have  been  made  to  assume,  and  in  others  of  them 
there  is  no  moral  purpose  discoverable,  which  we  can  say 
required  the  employment  of  the  particular  means  to  effect 
the  end.  Thus,  astronomers  can  not  assign  a  moral  pur- 
pose for  which  the  distribution  of  the  fixed  stars  was  made 
to  be  what  it  is,  and  which  purpose  could  not  have  been 
answered  by  some  other  arrangement.  At  the  same  time, 
it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  solar  system  was  arranged  with  ref- 
erence to  the  law  of  universal  gravitation,  which  made  this 
arrangement  of  the  different  bodies  essential  to  the  harmo- 
nious working  of  a  great  and  complex  piece  of  mechanism. 
The  present  formation  of  the  earth  may  have  resulted  just 
as  geologists  think  it  has,  and  yet  they  can  not  say  that 
there  was  no  moral  purpose  in  the  division  of  the  exterior 
surface  of  our  globe  into  land  and  water,  seas,  continents. 


NECESSARY  DISCRIMINATIONS.  171 

mountains,  etc.  These  are  departments  of  Nature  in  which 
man  has  had  no  influence  in  producing  the  phenomena. 
When  we  turn  to  those  departments  in  which  man  is  placed 
as  an  actor,  we  often  find  an  adjustment  of  means  to  an 
end  that  is  so  comprehensive,  as  well  as  so  plain,  that  we 
may  justly  conclude  it  to  have  been  chosen  by  the  creating 
power,  with  the  express  intent  that  human  agency  should 
be  the  means  by  which  certain  effects  are  to  be  produced. 
For  example  :  man  is  eminently  a  social  animal.  Human 
society  is  a  result  of  his  strong  social  propensities.  He  is 
placed  in  it  as  an  actor ;  and  in  this  arrangement  there  is 
discoverable  a  moral  purpose  bo  plain  that  we  may  right- 
fully regard  the  social  phenomena  of  mutual  protection 
and  improvement  as  proofs  that  society  was  ordained  as  the 
sphere  of  man's  highest  development  on  earth. 

So  that,  in  reasoning  about  the  phenomena  of  any  of  the 
departments  of  Nature  as  affording  indications  of  the  so- 
called  universal  law  of  evolution,  we  must  not  forget  the 
distinction  between  organized  inanimate  and  organized  ani- 
mated matter ;  or  the  distinction  between  those  depart- 
ments in  which  human  will  or  choice,  or  the  human  intel- 
lect, has  had  no  influence  in  shaping  the  phenomena,  and 
those  in  which  they  have  had  great  influence  ;  or  the  dis- 
tinction between  phenomena  in  which  a  special  moral  pur- 
pose can  be  and  those  in  which  it  can  not  be  discovered,  as 
the  reason  for  the  existing  order  of  things.  It  is  especially 
hazardous  to  argue  that  because  a  spontaneous  develop- 
ment, or  a  gradual  evolution,  can  be  traced  in  some  of  the 
phenomena  of  inanimate  mafcter,  it  therefore  must  obtain 
in  the  animal  kingdom.  It  is  alike  hazardous  to  argue, 
because  there  has  been  what  is  called  evolution  in  some 
departments  of  Nature  over  which  man  has  had  no  control, 
that  the  same  law  obtains  in  other  departments  over  which 
he  has  also  had  no  control,  or  those  in  which  he  has  had  a 
large  control. 
9 


172  CPwEATIOIlT  OR  EYOLUTIOIT? 

The  bearing  of  these  discriminations  upon  the  supposed 
universality  of  the  law  of  evolution  may  now  be  seen  if  we 
attend  to  the  further  inquiry  whether  that  law  obtains 
throughout  all  the  phenomena  of  any  one  department  of 
Nature  as  the  sole  cause  of  the  phenomena  in  that  depart- 
ment. Take  again,  for  example,  the  solar  system.  Sup- 
pose it  to  be  true  that  the  bodies  which  compose  it,  the  sun 
and  the  planetary  spheres,  were  gradually  evolved  out  of 
diffused  matter.  Does  it  necessarily  follow  that  their  exist- 
ing arrangements  and  mutual  relations  were  not  specially 
designed  ?  That  their  orbits,  their  revolutions,  their  dis- 
tances from  each  other,  were  not  specially  planned  ?  That 
they  were  not  hung  in  their  respective  positions  with  an 
intentional  adjustment  to  the  great  force  of  gravitation 
that  was  prevailing  throughout  the  universe  ?  Must  we 
suppose  that  all  this  part  of  the  whole  phenomena  of  the 
solar  system  resulted  from  the  operation  of  an  ungoverned 
evolution,  because  the  bodies  themselves  may  have  been 
gradually  formed  out  of  diffused  matter  into  their  present 
condition  without  being  spoken  at  once  into  that  condition 
by  the  fiat  of  the  Almighty  ?  We  can  certainly  see  that 
the  existing  arrangements  must  have  been  intentional ;  and, 
if  intentional,  the  intention  must  have  taken  effect  in  the 
production  of  the  phenomena  exhibited  by  the  arrange- 
ment, as  any  design  takes  effect  in  the  production  of  the 
phenomena  which  are  open  to  our  observation.  The  moral 
purpose  evinced  by  one  part  of  this  arrangement,  the  alter- 
nation of  day  and  night  upon  the  earth,  for  example,  might 
have  been  effected  by  some  other  means  than  the  means 
which  now  produce  it.  But  there  is  the  strongest  evidence 
that  a  certain  means  was  chosen  and  intentionally  put  into 
operation  ;  and  although  we  can  not  tell  why  that  means 
was  preferred,  the  fact  that  it  was  both  designed  and  pre- 
ferred makes  it  a  special  creation.  To  suppose  that  it  was 
left  to  be  worked  out  by  a  process  such  as  the  hypothesis 


EVOLUTION  NOT  A  UNIVERSAL  LAW.  1^3 

of  evolution  assumes,  by  the  gradual,  fortuitous,  and  un- 
governed  operation  of  infinitely  slow-moving  causes,  which 
might  have  made  the  adjustments  very  different  from  what 
they  are,  is  to  deprive  it  of  the  element  of  intentional 
preference  that  is  proved  by  its  existence.  The  hypothesis 
of  evolution,  when  applied  to  all  the  phenomena  of  the 
solar  system,  relegates  one  great  branch  of  those  phenomena 
to  a  realm  from  which  all  special  purposes  and  all  direct 
design  are  absent,  and  confines  the  explanation  of  the  phe- 
nomena to  the  operation  of  causes  that  might  have  brought 
about  very  different  arrangements.  That  this  supposed 
process  of  evolution  has,  in  fact,  been  followed  by  the  ex- 
isting arrangements  of  the  solar  system,  does  not  prove,  or 
tend  to  prove,  that  the  existing  arrangements  are  solely 
due  to  the  supposed  method  of  their  production ;  for  we 
can  not  leave  out  the  element  of  some  design,  and  if  there 
was  a  design,  the  very  nature  of  the  system  required  that 
the  design  should  be  executed  by  a  special  creation  of  a 
plan  for  the  mutual  relations  of  the  bodies  composing  it. 
The  bodies  themselves  might  have  been  gradually  formed 
out  of  diffused  matter,  floating  loosely  in  the  realms  of 
space.  The  relations  of  the  bodies  to  each  other  required 
the  act  of  an  intelligent  will,  in  the  direct  formation  of  an 
intentional  plan ;  and  that  act  was  an  act  of  special  crea- 
tion in  the  same  sense  in  which  the  structural  plan  of  a 
species  of  animal  was  a  special  creation. 

Here,  then,  is  one  department  of  Nature  in  which  it  is 
not  necessary  and  not  philosophical  to  assume  that  the  law 
of  so-called  evolution  has  been  the  universal  law  to  which 
all  the  phenomena  of  that  department  are  to  be  attributed. 
If  we  follow  out  the  same  inquiry  in  other  departments  of 
Nature  remote  from  the  animal  kingdom,  we  shall  find 
reason  to  adopt  the  same  conclusion  in  respect  to  their 
phenomena.  Thus,  let  us  for  a  moment  contemplate  an- 
other of  the  departments  in  which  inanimate  matter  is  the 


174  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

subject  of  observation,  and  in  wbicb  human  will  or  intelli- 
gence has  had  no  agency  in  producing  the  phenomena, 
namely,  the  formation  of  the  present  structure  of  the 
earth  as  it  is  described  by  geologists.  This  is  a  depart- 
ment in  which  the  hypothesis  of  evolution  finds  perhaps 
its  stronghold.  Yet  it  is  necessary  even  here  to  recognize 
an  intentional  plan  and  direct  design  in  some  part  of  the 
phenomena.  Let  us  suppose  that  during  the  period  re- 
quired by  any  of  the  speculations  of  geologists,  however 
long,  a  mass  of  matter  was  gathered  in  an  unformed  con- 
dition, and  gradually  shaped  into  the  present  condition  of 
the  earth  by  the  action  of  its  constituent  elements  upon 
each  other,  influenced  by  the  laws  of  mechanical  forces,  of 
chemical  combinations,  of  light  and  heat,  and  of  whatever 
physical  agencies  were  made  to  operate  in  the  process  of 
evolving  tlie  mass  into  the  condition  in  which  it  has  been 
known  to  us  for  a  certain  time.  Is  it  a  rational  conclusion 
that  the  intelligent  power  which  put  these  forces  in  opera- 
tion— an  hypothesis  with  which  we  must  begin  to  reason, 
or  leave  the  origin  of  both  matter  and  forces  to  blind 
chance — did  not  guide  their  operation  at  all  to  the  inten- 
tional production  of  the  results  which  we  see  ?  The  results 
disclose  some  manifest  purposes ;  and  although  these  pur- 
poses, or  others  equally  beneficent,  might  have  been  ac- 
complished by  different  arrangements,  we  can  see  that 
they  have  been  effected  by  a  certain  arrangement  of  a 
specific  character.  The  results  have  been  continents,  seas, 
mountains,  rivers,  lakes,  formation  and  distribution  of 
minerals,  growth  of  forests,  and  an  almost  innumerable, 
and  certainly  a  very  varied,  catalogue  of  phenomena,  physi- 
cal formations,  and  adaptations.  All  these  varied  results 
disclose  a  plan  by  which  this  earth  became  a  marvelously 
convenient  abode  for  the  living  creatures  that  have  in- 
habited or  still  inhabit  it,  especially  for  man.  The  forma- 
tion of  this  plan  was  an  intelligent  act,  if  wc  suppose  that 


SPENCER'S  ORIGIN  OF  ANIMALS.  175 

any  intelligent  being  projected  the  original  gathering  of 
the  crude  primordial  matter  and  subjected  it  to  the  opera- 
tion of  the  forces  employed  to  shape  it  into  its  present  con- 
dition. This  plan  was  an  act'  of  special  creation,  in  the 
same  sense  in  which  the  plan  of  a  particular  animal  organ- 
ism may  have  been  a  special  creation.  While,  therefore,  a 
process  which  may  be  called  evolution  may  have  operated 
as  the  agency  through  which  the  earth  has  reached  its 
present  j)hysical  condition,  the  plan  of  that  condition  was 
certainly  not  formed  by  any  such  process  ;  for  it  was,  if  it 
was  the  product  of  anything,  the  product  of  an  intelligent 
will  operating  in  the  production  of  preconceived  results  by 
the  exercise  of  superhuman  and  infinite  wisdom  and  fore- 
eight. 

When  we  turn  to  a  department  in  which  human  influ- 
ence has  largely  or  wholly  shaped  the  phenomena,  we  find 
numerous  special  creations  that  are  not  attributable  to  the 
operation  of  any  law  of  development  or  evolution  such  as  is 
supposed  to  have  led  to  the  production  of  one  species  of 
animal  out  of  another,  or  out  of  several  previous  species. 
In  short,  a  survey  of  all  the  departments  of  Nature  leads  to 
the  conclusion  that  while  there  may  be  phenomena  which 
are  properly  traceable  to  the  operation  of  the  forces  of 
Nature,  or  to  fixed  general  systems  of  production,  there  is 
another  very  large  class  of  the  phenomena  which  owe  their 
existence  to  special  acts  of  an  intelligent  will,  finite  or 
infinite,  human  or  divine,  according  as  their  production 
required  superhuman  power  or  admitted  of  the  eflBcacy  of 
man's  intervention. 

The  way  is  now  somewhat  cleared  for  an  examination 
of  Mr.  Spencer's  application  of  the  law  of  evolution  to  the 
gradual  formation  of  different  species  of  animals  out  of  one 
or  more  previous  species,  without  any  act  of  special  creation 
intervening  anywhere  in  the  series.  We  have  seen  that  this 
alleged  law  is  not  of  universal  force  as  the  cause  of  all  the 


176  OREATIOIT  OR  EVOLUTION? 

phenomena  in  all  the  departments  of  Nature.  "When  we 
come  to  apply  it  as  the  hypothesis  which  is  to  account  for 
the  existence  of  different  species  of  animals  of  very  different 
types,  we  must  remember  that  we  are  dealing  with  organ- 
isms endowed  with  life,  and,  although  we  can  not  suffi- 
ciently explain  what  life  is,  we  know  that  animated  organ- 
isms are  brought  into  being  by  systems  of  production  that 
are  widely  different  from  the  modes  in  which  Inanimate 
matter  may  have  been  or  has  been  made  to  assume  its  ex- 
isting forms.  Bearing  this  in  mind,  we  come  to  the  argu- 
ments and  proofs  by  which  Mr.  Spencer  maintains  the  im- 
mense superiority  of  the  evolution  hyjio thesis  over  that  of 
special  creations,  in  reference  to  the  animal  kingdom.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  this  is  a  department  in  which 
man  can  have  had  no  agency  in  producing  the  phenomena, 
for  whatever  may  have  been  the  slight  variations  produced 
by  human  interference  with  the  breeding  of  animals  domes- 
ticated from  their  wild  condition,  we  must  investigate  the 
origin  of  species  as  if  there  had  never  been  any  human  in- 
tervention in  the  crossing  of  breeds,  because  that  origin  is 
to  be  looked  for  in  a  sphere  entirely  removed  from  all 
human  interference.  Man  himself  is  included  in  the  in- 
vestigatioji,  and  we  must  make  that  investigation  in  refer- 
ence to  a  time  when  he  did  not  exist,  or  when  he  did  not 
exist  as  we  now  know  him. 

One  of  the  favorite  methods  of  Mr.  Spencer  consists  in 
arraying  difficulties  for  the  believers  in  special  creations, 
which,  he  argues,  can  not  be  encountered  by  their  hypothe- 
sis, and  then  arguing  that  there  are  no  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  the  hypothesis  of  evolution.  His  position  shall  be 
stated  with  all  the  strength  that  he  gives  to  it,  and  with 
all  the  care  that  I  can  bestow  upon  its  treatment.  He  puts 
the  argument  thus :  In  the  animal*  kingdom  individuals 
come  into  being  by  a  process  of  generation — that  is  to  say, 
they  arise  out  of  other  individuals  of  the  same  species.     If 


SPENCEE'S  ARGUMENT.  177 

we  contemplate  the  individuals  of  any  species,  we  find  an 
evolution  repeated  in  every  one  of  them  by  a  uniform  pro- 
cess of  development,  which,  in  a  short  space  of  time,  pro- 
duces a  series  of  astonishing  changes.  The  seed  becomes  a 
tree,  and  the  tree  differs  from  the  seed  immeasurably  in 
bulk,  structure,  color,  form,  specific  gravity,  and  chemical 
composition  ;  so  that  no  visible  resemblance  can  be  pointed 
out  between  them.  The  small,  semi-transparent  gelatinous 
spherule  constituting  the  human  ovum  becomes  the  newly- 
born  child  ;  and  this  human  infant  "is  so  complex  in  its 
structure  that  a  cyclopaedia  is  needed  to  describe  its  con- 
stituent parts.  The  germinal  vesicle  is  so  simple  that  it 
may  be  defined  in  a  line.  Nevertheless,  a  few  months  suf- 
fice to  develop  the  one  out  of  the  other,  and  that,  too,  by 
a  series  of  modifications  so  small  that  were  the  embryo 
examined,  at  successive  minutes,  even  a  microscope  would 
with  difficulty  disclose  any  sensible  changes.  Aided  by 
such  facts,  the  conception  of  general  evolution  may  be  ren- 
dered as  definite  a  conception  as  any  of  our  complex  con- 
ceptions can  be  rendered.  If,  instead  of  the  successive 
minutes  of  a  child's  foetal  life,  we  take  successive  genera- 
tions of  creatures,  if  we  regard  the  successive  generations 
as  differing  from  each  other  no  more  than  the  fcetus  did 
in  successive  minutes,  our  imaginations  must  indeed  be 
feeble  if  we  fail  to  realize  in  thought  the  evolution  of  the 
most  complex  organism  out  of  the  simplest.  If  a  single 
cell,  under  appropriate  conditions,  becomes  a  man  in  the 
space  of  a  few  years,  there  can  surely  be  no  difficulty  in 
understanding  how,  under  appropriate  conditions,  a  cell 
may,  in  the  course  of  untold  millions  of  years,  give  origin 
to  the  human  race."  * 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  comparison  between  what  takes 
place  in  the  development  of  the  individual  animal  in  the 

*  "  Biology,"  i,  pp.  349,  350. 


178  OKEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

space  of  a  few  years,  and  what  may  be  supposed  to  take  place 
in  the  successive  generations  of  different  creatures  through 
untold  millions  of  years.  We  turn  then  to  the  proof,  direct 
or  indirect,  that  races  of  entirely  distinct  organisms  have 
resulted  from  antecedent  races  by  gradual  transformation. 
Direct  proof  sufficient  to  establish  the  progressive  modifica- 
tions of  antecedent  races  into  other  races  is  not  claimed  to 
exist ;  yet  it  is  claimed  that  there  are  numerous  facts  of  the 
order  required  by  the  hypothesis  which  warrant  our  accept- 
ance of  it.  These  facts  are  the  alterations  of  structure 
which  take  place  in  successive  generations  of  the  same 
species,  amounting,  in  the  course  of  several  generations  of 
the  same  race,  to  additions  and  suppressions  of  parts.  These 
changes  among  the  individuals  of  the  same  race,  compre- 
hended in  what  is  scientifically  called  "heredity"  and 
**  variation,"  are  exhibited  by  the  transmission  of  ancestral 
peculiarities  of  structure,  by  their  occasional  suppression 
in  some  individuals  of  the  race  and  their  reappearance  in 
others,  and  by  a  difterence  in  the  relative  sizes  of  parts. 
These  variations,  arising  in  successive  short  intervals  of 
time,  are  said  to  be  quite  as  marked  as  those  which  arise 
in  a  developing  embryo,  and,  in  fact,  they  are  said  to  be 
often  muj3h  more  marked.  **  The  structural  modifications 
proved  to  have  taken  place  since  organisms  have  been  ob- 
served is  not  less  than  the  hypothesis  demands — bears  as' 
great  a  ratio  to  this  brief  period  as  the  total  amount  of 
structural  change  seen  in  the  evolution  of  a  com]3lex  organ- 
ism out  of  a  simple  germ  bears  to  the  vast  period  during 
which  living  forms  have  existed  on  earth."  * 

*  "Biology,"  i,  p.  351.  I  am  not  quite  sure  that  I  understand  Tvbat 
Mr.  Spencer  means  by  "  direct "  proof.  In  the  passage  immediately  follow- 
ing the  seiitence  last  quoted,  he  speaks  of  "  the  kind  and  quantity  of  direct 
evidence  that  all  organic  beings  have  gradually  arisen,"  etc.,  whereas,  in  a 
previous  passage,  he  had  admitted  that  the  facts  at  present  assignable  in 
direct  poof  of  this  hypothesis  are  insufficient.     I  presume  he  meant  insuffi. 


SPENCER'S  ARGUMENT.  179 

The  difficulty  that  is  thus  prepared  for  the  hypothesis 
of  the  special  creation  of  species  may  now  be  stated.  There 
is  a  professed  conception  of  the  ultimate  power  which  is 
manifested  to  us  through  phenomena.  That  conception  im- 
plies omnipotence  and  omniscience,  and  it  therefore  implies 
regularity  of  method,  because  uniformity  of  method  is  a 
mark  of  strength,  whereas  irregularity  of  method  is  a  mark 
of  weakness,  "A  persistent  process,  adapted  to  all  contin- 
gencies, implies  greater  skill  in  the  achievement  of  an  end 
than  its  achievement  by  the  process  of  meeting  the  contin- 
gencies as  they  severally  arise."  And,  therefore,  those  who 
adopt  the  notion  of  the  special  creation  of  species  do,  it  is 
said,  in  truth  impair  the  professed  character  of  the  power 
to  which  they  assume  that  the  phenomena  of  the  existence 
of  species  are  to  be  referred,  whereas  the  hypothesis  of  the 
evolution  of  species  out  of  other  species  is  much  more  con- 
sistent with  the  professed  conception  of  the  ultimate  i:)Ower. 

In  this  claim  of  superiority  for  the  evolution  hypothesis, 
the  learned  philosopher  seems  to  have  been  almost  oblivious 
of  the  fact  that  he  was  dealing  with  animal  organisms  in  two 
aspects  :  first,  in  regard  to  the  method  by  which  individ- 
uals of  the  same  species  come  into  existe-nce ;  and,  second- 
dent  in  number.  (Compare  "Biology,"  i,  pp.  351  and  352).  Now,  I  should 
say  that  dii^ect  proof  of  the  hypothesis  that  all  animal  organisms  have 
arisen  successively  out  of  one  another  would  require  more  or  less  positive 
evidence  of  such  occurrences ;  and  that  the  proof  which  is  afforded  by  what 
has  taken  place  within  the  limits  of  a  single  species  in  the  course  of  succes- 
sive generations  would  be  indirect  evidence  of  what  may  have  taken  place 
in  the  evolution  of  different  species,  because  it  requires  the  aid  of  analogy 
to  connect  the  two.  I  am  not  aware  that  there  is  supposed  to  be  any  proof 
of  the  evolution  of  species  out  of  species,  excepting  that  which  is  derived 
from  what  has  taken  place  in  single  races  in  the  development  of  the  ovum 
into  the  infant,  the  development  of  the  infant  into  the  mature  animal,  and 
the  limited  varieties  of  structure  appearing  among  individuals  of  the  same 
race.  As  I  go  on  through  the  examination  of  Mr.  Spencer's  argument,  it 
will  appear  whether  there  are  grounds  for  regarding  this  kind  of  reasoning 
as  satisfactory  or  the  reverse. 


180  OEEATIOI^  OR  EVOLUTION? 

ly,  in  regard  to  the  method  by  which  different  species  have 
come  into  existence.  In  the  first  case,  regularity  of  method 
is  evinced  by  the  establishment  of  a  uniform  process  of 
procreation  and  gestation.  This  process,  while  retaining 
throughout  the  different  classes  of  animals  one  funda- 
mental and  characteristic  method,  namely,  the  union  of 
the  sexes,  is  widely  varied  in  respect  to  the  time  of  gesta- 
tion, the  foetal  development,  and  the  noiwishment  of  the 
young  before  and  after  birth.  There  is  no  diflQculty  what- 
ever in  discovering  the  great  reason  for  which  this  system 
of  the  reproduction  of  individuals  was  established.  The 
tie  that  it  makes  between  parents  and  offspring,  and  more 
especially  the  tie  between  the  female  parent  and  the  off- 
spring, was  obviously  one  grand  end  for  which  this  system 
of  giving  existence  to  individuals  was  adopted ;  and  al- 
though the  instinct  which  arises  out  of  it  is  in  some  species 
feeble  and  almost  inactive,  it  rises  higher  and  higher  in  its 
power  and  its  manifestations  in  proportion  as  the  animals 
rise  in  the  scale  of  being,  until  in  man  it  exhibits  its  great- 
est force  and  its  most  various  effects,  producing  at  last  pride 
of  ancestry,  and  affecting  in  various  ways  the  social  and 
even  the  political  'condition  of  mankind.  But  how  can 
any  corresponding  connection  between  one  race  of  animals 
and  another,  or  between  antecedent  and  subsequent  species, 
be  imagined  ?  The  sexual  impulse  implanted  in  animals 
leads  to  the  production  of  offspring  of  the  same  race.  The 
desire  for  offspring  keeps  up  the  perpetual  succession  of 
individuals,  and  love  of  the  offspring  insures  the  protection 
of  the  newly  born  by  the  most  powerful  of  impulses.  But 
what  can  be  imagined  as  an  analogous  impulse,  appetite,  or 
propensity  which  should  lead  one  species  to  strive  after  the 
production  of  another  species  ?  Is  it  said  that  the  different 
species  are  evolved  out  of  one  another  by  a  process  in  which 
the  conscious  desires,  the  efforts,  the  aspirations  of  the  pre- 
ceding races  play  no  part  ?    This  is  certainly  true,  if  there 


REGULARITY  AND  IRREGULARITY  OF  METHOD.    181 

was  ever  any  such  process  as  the  evolution  of  species  out  of 
species ;  and  it  follows  that,  in  respect  to  one  great  moral 
purpose  of  a  process,  there  is  no  analogy  to  be  derived  from 
the  regularity  and  uniformity  of  the  process  by  which  in- 
dividuals of  the  same  species  are  multiplied.  Moreover,  in 
regard  to  the  latter  process,  we  know  that  a  barrier  has 
been  set  to  its  operation  ;  for  Nature  does  not  now  admit 
of  the  sexual  union  between  animals  of  entirely  distinct 
species,  and  we  have  no  reason  to  believe  that  it  ever  did 
admit  of  it  at  any  period  in  the  geological  history  of  the 
earth. 

Still  further:  In  what  sense  are  special  creations  '' ir- 
regularities of  method"?  In  what  sense  are  they  "con- 
tingencies" ?  And  if  they  are  "contingencies,"  how  does 
it  imply  less  skill  to  suppose  that  they  have  been  met  as 
they  have  severally  arisen,  than  would  be  implied  by  sup- 
posing that  they  have  been  achieved  by  a  uniform  process 
adapted  to  all  contingencies  ?  This  notion  that  something 
is  derogated  from  the  idea  of  omnipotence  and  omniscience 
by  the  hypothesis  that  such  a  xoower  has  acted  by  special 
exercises  of  its  creating  faculty  in  the  production  of  differ- 
ent orders  of  beings  as  completed  and  final  types,  instead 
of  allowing  or  causing  them  to  be  successively  evolved  out 
of  each  other  by  gradual  derivations,  is  neither  logical  nor 
philosophical.  In  no  proper  sense  is  a  method  of  action  an 
irregular  method  unless  it  was  imposed  upon  the  actor  by 
some  antecedent  necessity,  which  compelled  him  to  apply 
a  method  which  was  made  uniform  in  one  case  to  another 
case  in  which  the  same  kind  of  uniformity  would  not  be 
indispensable.  The  uniformity  of  the  process  by  which  in- 
dividuals of  the  same  species  are  multiplied  is  a  uniformity 
for  that  particular  end.  The  regularity  in  that  case  is  a 
regularity  that  has  its  special  objects  to  accomplish.  The 
uniformity  and  regularity  of  a  different  method  of  causing 
different  types  of  organisms  to  exist,  so  long  as  the  object 


182  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

is  always  effected  in  the  same  way,  is  just  as  truly  a  regu- 
larity and  uniformity  for  that  case,  and  just  as  completely 
fulfills  the  idea  of  infinite  skill.  That  such  creations  are 
specially  made,  that  they  are  independently  made,  and  that 
each  is  made  for  a  distinct  purpose  and  also  for  the  com- 
plex purposes  of  a  yaried  class  of  organisms,  does  not  ren- 
der them  contingencies  arising  at  random,  or  make  the 
method  of  meeting  them  an  occasional,  irregular,  spas- 
modic device  for  encountering  something  unforeseen  and 
unexpected.  The  very  purposes  for  which  the  distinct  or- 
ganisms exist — purposes  that  are  apparent  on  a  comprehen- 
siye  survey  of  their  various  structures  and  modes  of  life — 
and  the  fact  that  they  have  come  into  existence  by  some 
process  that  was  for  the  production  of  the  ends  a  uniform 
and  regular  one,  whether  that  process  was  special  creation 
or  evolution,  render  the  two  methods  of  action  equally  con- 
sistent with  the  professed  conception  of  the  ultimate  power. 
On  the  hypothesis  of  special  creations  so  many  different 
types  of  organism  as  the  Creator  has  seen  fit  to  create  have 
been  made  by  the  exercise  of  a  power  remaining  uniformly 
of  the  same  infinite  nature,  but  varying  the  products  at 
will  for  the  purposes  of  infinite  wisdom. 

What,  again,  does  the  learned  author  mean  by  meeting 
** contingencies "  "as  they  have  severally  arisen'^?  This 
suggestion  of  a  difficulty  for  the  believers  in  special  crea- 
tions seems  to  imply  that  the  distinct  types  of  animal  or- 
ganisms arose  somehow  as  necessities  outside  of  the  divine 
will,  and  that  the  Almighty  artificer  had  to  devise  occa- 
sional methods  of  meeting  successive  demands  which  he 
did  not  create.  The  hypothesis  of  special  creations  does 
not  drive  its  believers  into  any  such  implications.  The 
several  distinct  types  of  animal  organisms  are  supposed  to 
have  arisen  in  the  divine  mind  as  types  which  the  Almighty 
saw  fit  to  create  for  certain  purposes,  and  to  have  been  sev- 
erally fashioned  as  types  by  his  infinite  power.     They  are 


SUPPOSED  ANALOGIES.  183 

in  no  sense  "contingencies"  which  he  had  to  meet  as  occa- 
sions arising  outside  of  his  infinite  will.  A  human  artifi- 
cer has  conceived  and  executed  upon  a  novel  plan  a  ma- 
chine that  is  distinguishable  from  all  other  machines.  He 
did  net  create  the  demand  for  that  machine  ;  the  demand 
has  grown  out  of  the  wants  of  society ;  and  the  artificer 
has  met  the  demand  by  his  genius  and  his  mechanical 
ctill,  which  have  effected  a  marked  improvement  in  the 
condition  of  society.  In  one  sense,  therefore,  he  has  met  a 
**  contingency,"  because  he  has  met  a  demand.  But  the 
infinite  Creator,  upon  the  hypothesis  of  his  existence  and 
attributes,  does  not  meet  an  external  demand ;  there  is  no 
demand  upon  him  ;  he  creates  the  occasion  ;  he  makes  the 
different  organisms  to  effectuate  the  infinite  purposes  which 
he  also  creates ;  the  want  and  the  means  of  satisfying  the 
want  alike  arise  in  the  infinite  wisdom  and  will.  Such  is 
the  hypothesis.  We  may  now,  therefore,  pursue  in  some 
further  detail  the  argument  which  maintains  that  this  hy- 
pothesis is  of  far  inferior  strength  to  that  of  evolution,  as 
the  method  in  which  the  Almighty  power  has  acted  in  the 
production  of  different  animal  organisms. 

First  we  have  the  analogy  that  is  supposed  to  be  afford- 
ed by  what  takes  place  in  the  development  of  a  single  cell 
into  a  man  in  the  space  of  a  few  years,  and  an  alleged  cor- 
respondence of  development  by  which  a  single  cell,  in  the 
course  of  untold  millions  of  years,  has  given  origin  to  the 
human  race.  Granting  any  difference  of  time  which  this 
comparison  calls  for,  and  substituting  in  place  of  the  suc- 
cessive moments  or  years  of  an  individual  life,  from  the 
formation  of  the  ovum  to  the  fully  developed  animal,  the 
successive  generations  of  any  imaginable  series  of  animals, 
the  question  is  not  merely  what  we  can  definitely  conceive, 
or  how  successfully  we  can  construct  a  theory.  It  is 
whether  the  supposed  analogy  will  hold  ;  whether  we  can 
find  that  in  the  two  cases  development  takes  place  in  the 


184:  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

same  way  or  in  a  way  that  is  so  nearly  alike  in  the  two  cases 
as  to  warrant  us  in  reasoning  from  the  one  to  the  other. 
In  the  case  of  the  development  of  the  single  cell  into  the 
mature  animal,  although  we  can  not,  either  before  or  after 
birth,  detect  the  changes  that  are  taking  place  from  minute 
to  minute,  the  infinitesimal  accretions  or  losses,  we  know 
that  there  is  a  perpetual  and  unbroken  connection  of  life 
maintained  from  the  moment  when  the  foetus  is  formed  to 
the  moment  when  the  mature  animal  stands  before  us. 
Break  this  connection  anywhere  in  the  process  of  deyelop- 
ment,  and  life  is  destroyed ;  the  development  is  at  once  ar- 
rested. It  is  this  connection  that  constitutes,  as  I  presume, 
what  the  learned  author  calls  the  ^*  appropriate  conditions," 
in  the  case  of  the  production  of  the  individual  animal ;  it 
is,  at  all  events,  the  one  grand  and  indispensable  condition 
to  the  development  of  the  cell  into  the  foetus,  of  the  foetus 
into  the  newly  born  child,  and  of  the  child  into  the  man. 
Now,  if  we  are  to  reason  from  this  case  of  individual  devel- 
opment to  the  other  case  of  successive  generations  of  creat- 
ures differing  from  each  other  in  the  same  or  any  other 
ratio  in  which  the  perfect  man  differs  from  the  ovum,  the 
foetus,  or  the  newly  born  child,  which  are  all  successive 
stages  of  one  and  the  same  individual  life,  we  ought  to  find 
in  the  successive  generations  of  the  different  creatures  some 
bond  of  connection,  some  continuity  of  lives  with  liyes, 
some  perpetuation  from  one  organism  to  another,  that  will 
constitute  the  ''appropriate  conditions "  for  a  correspond- 
ing development  from  a  single  cell  through  the  successive 
types  of  animal  life  into  the  human  race.  Without  such 
connection,  continuity,  perpetuation  from  organism  to  or- 
ganism, shown  by  some  satisfactory  proof,  we  have  nothing 
but  a  theory,  and  a  theory  that  is  destitute  of  the  grand 
conditions  that  will  alone  support  the  analogy  between  the 
two  cases.  If  anywhere  in  the  supposed  chain  of  successive 
generations  of  different  animals  the  continuity  of  animal 


INDIVIDUAL  AND  FAMILY  EESEMBLANCES.     185 

and  animal  is  broken,  the  hypothesis  of  special  creations  of 
new  organisms  must  come  in  :  for  we  must  remember  that 
we  are  reasoning  about  animal  life,  and  if  the  continuity  of 
lives  with  one  another  is  interrupted,  the  series  terminates, 
just  as  the  series  between  the  ovum,  the  foetus,  the  child, 
and  the  man  terminates,  at  whatever  stage  it  is  interrupted 
by  a  cause  that  destroys  the  mysterious  principle  of  life. 
It  is  therefore  absolutely  necessary  to  look  for  some  proof 
which  will  show  that  in  the  supposed  series  of  successive 
generations  of  animals  out  of  antecedent  types,  by  what- 
ever gradations  and  in  whatever  space  of  time  we  may  sup- 
pose the  process  of  evolution  to  have  been  worked,  there 
has  been  a  continuity  of  life  between  the  different  types,  a 
perpetuation  of  organism  from  organism,  a  connection  of 
lives  with  lives. 

We  now  come  to  another  supposed  analogy,  on  which 
great  stress  is  laid  by  the  evolution  school,  and  especially 
by  Mr.  Spencer.  Individuals  of  the  same  family  are  found 
to  be  marked  by  striking  peculiarities  of  structure,  ances- 
tral traits,  which  appear  and  disappear  and  then  appear 
again,  in  successive  generations.  This  is  obviously  a  case 
where  the  "appropriate  conditions"  are  all  comprehended 
in  the  connection  of  life  with  life.  When  we  trace  the 
pedigree  of  a  single  man  or  any  other  individual  animal 
back  to  a  remote  pair  of  ancestors,  we  connect  together  in. 
an  unbroken  chain  the  successive  generations  of  parents 
and  offspring.  If  the  chain  is  anywhere  broken,  so  that 
direct  descent  can  not  be  traced  throughout  the  series,  we 
can  not  by  direct  evidence  carry  the  peculiarities  of  family 
traits  any  further  back  than  the  ancestor  or  pair  of  ances- 
tors with  which  we  can  find  an  unbroken  connection  of  life 
with  life.  We  do  indeed  often  say  in  common  parlance 
that  an  individual  must  have  a  trace  of  a  certain  blood  in 
his  veins,  because  of  certain  peculiarities  of  structure,  com- 
plexion, or  other  tokens  of  descent,  even  when  we  can  not 


186  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

find  a  perfect  pedigree  which  would  show  where  the  infu- 
sion of  the  supposed  blood  came  in.  But  although  it  might 
be  allowable,  in  making  out  the  descent  of  an  indiyidual 
man  or  any  other  animal,  from  a  certain  ancestor  or  pair  of 
ancestors,  to  aid  the  pedigree  by  strong  family  or  race  re- 
semblance, even  when  a  link  is  wanting,  it  could  only  be 
for  the  purpose  of  establishing  a  pedigree,  a  connection  of 
lives  with  lives,  that  such  collateral  evidence  could  be  re- 
sorted to.  If  by  direct  proof  of  an  unbroken  descent  a  full 
pedigree  is  made  out,  or  if,  when  some  link  is  wanting,  the 
collateral  proof  from  strong  family  or  race  resemblances  is 
sufficient  to  warrant  the  belief  that  the  link  once  existed, 
we  might  accept  it  as  a  fact  that  the  individual  descended 
from  the  suj)posed  ancestors  in  a  direct  line,  or  that  some 
peculiarity  of  blood  came  into  his  constitution  at  some 
point  in  the  descent  of  individuals  from  individuals.* 

*  I  have  stated  here,  in  reference  to  the  pedigree  of  an  individual,  a  far 
more  liberal  rule  of  evidence  than  would  probably  be  allowed  in  courts  of 
justice,  where  anything  of  value  was  depending  upon  the  establishment  of 
a  descent  from  a  certain  ancestor.  But  I  have  purposely  suggested  the 
broadest  rule  that  can  be  applied  to  family  or  race  resemblances  as  a  means 
of  aiding  a  pedigree  in  popular  determination  or  in  a  judicium  rusticum. 
For  example,  suppose  that  there  were  persons  now  living  in  this  coun- 
try who  trace  their  descent  from  the  English  husband  of  Pocahontas,  the 
daughter  of  an  Indian  chief,  and  from  her.  They  bear,  we  will  suppose, 
the  family  name  of  the  Englishman  whom  she  is  known  to  have  married, 
and  perhaps  one  of  them  bears  very  strong  resemblance  to  the  Indian  race 
in  features,  complexion,  and  hair.  In  a  judicial  trial  of  this  person's  sup- 
posed pedigree  I  do  not  suppose  that  these  resemblances,  if  they  constituted 
his  sole  evidence,  together  with  the  name  of  Rolfe  which  he  bears,  and 
which  a  certain  number  of  his  ancestors  may  have  borne  before  him,  would 
be  received  as  evidence  of  his  descent  from  the  Indian  girl  whose  name  was 
Pocahontas,  and  who  married  an  Englishman  of  the  name  of  Rolfe  more 
than  two  centuries  ago.  It  would  be  necessary  to  make  some  proof  of  the 
whole  pedigree  by  the  kind  of  evidence  which  the  law  admits  in  such  cases, 
and  then  the  resemblances  of  the  individual  to  the  Indian  race  might  pos- 
sibly be  received  as  confirmatory  proof,  in  aid  of  the  proof  derived  from 


NECESSAEY  CONNECTION'S  WANTING.  187 

Can  we  apply  tliis  mode  of  reasoning  to  the  evolution 
of  distinct  types  of  animals  out  of  antecedent  and  different 
types  ?  The  very  nature  of  the  descent  or  derivation  that 
is  to  be  satisfactorily  established  requires  a  connection  of 
lives  with  lives,  just  as  such  a  connection  is  required  in 
making  out  the  pedigree  of  an  individual  animal.  We 
must  construct  a  pedigree  for  the  different  classes  or  types 
of  animals  through  which,  by  direct  or  collateral  evidence, 
we  can  connect  the  different  organisms  together,  so  as  to 
warrant  the  belief  that  by  the  ordinary  process  of  genera- 
tion these  animals  of  widely  different  organizations  have 
been  successfully  developed  out  of  each  other,  life  from 
life,  organisms  from  organisms.  The  hypothesis  is,  that 
from  a  single  cell  all  the  various  races  and  types  of  animals 
have  in  process  of  time  been  gradually  formed  out  of  each 
other,  through  an  ascending  scale,  until  we  reach  the  human 
race,  whose  race  pedigree  consists  of  a  series  of  impercepti- 
ble formations,  back  to  the  single  cell  from  which  the  whole 
series  proceeded.  This,  we  must  remember,  is  not  a  case 
of  the  evolving  production  of  different  forms  of  inanimate 
matter,  but  it  is  the  case  of  the  evolving  production  of  dif- 
ferent forms  of  animal  life  out  of  other  preceding  and  dif- 
ferent forms,  by  the  process  of  animal  generation. 

Of  direct  evidence  of  this  evolution  of  species,  it  can 
not  be  said  that  we  have  any  which  will  make  it  a  parallel 
case  with  the  direct  evidence  of  the  descent  of  an  individual 
from  parents  and  other  ancestors.  We  have  different  ani- 
mal organisms  that  are  marked  by  distinctions  which  com- 

the  family  name  of  Pocahontas's  English  husband,  from  reputation,  written 
or  oral  declarations  of  deceased  witnesses,  family  documents,  ancient  grave- 
stones, and  the  like.  In  popular  judgment  most  persons  would  be  apt  to 
accept  the  family  name  of  Rolfe  and  the  apparent  trace  of  Indian  blood  aa 
sufficient  proof  of  the  descent  of  the  individual  from  the  Indian  girl  who 
married  John  Rolfe.  But  in  a  court  of  justice  these  facts  would  go  for 
nothing  without  some  independeni  proof  of  the  pedigree. 


188  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

pel  us  to  regard  them  as  separate  species,  and  there  is  no 
known  instance  in  which  we  can  directly  trace  a  production 
of  one  of  these  distinct  species  out  of  another  or  others  by 
finding  a  connection  of  lives  with  lives.  Even  in  the  vege- 
table kingdom,  with  all  the  crosses  for  which  Nature  has 
made  such  wonderful  and  various  provision,  we  do  not  find 
such  occurrences  as  the  production  of  an  oak  out  of  the 
seed  of  an  apple,  or  the  production  of  an  orange-tree  out  of 
an  acorn.  We  do  not  gather  grapes  of  thorns  or  figs  of 
thistles.  There  are  barriers  set  to  miscegenation  even  in 
the  vegetable  world,  and  we  have  no  direct  evidence  that  at 
any  period  in  the  geological  history  of  the  earth  these  bar- 
riers have  been  crossed,  and  very  little  indirect  evidence  to 
warrant  us  in  believing  that  they  ever  have  been  or  ever 
will  be.  In  the  animal  kingdom  such  barriers  are  extreme- 
ly prominent  and  certain.  We  not  only  have  no  direct 
evidence  that  any  one  species  of  animal  was  at  any  period 
of  the  earth's  history  or  in  any  length  of  time  gradually 
evolved  out  of  another  distinct  species,  but  we  know  that 
the  union  of  the  sexes  and  the  production  of  new  individ- 
uals can  not  take  place  out  of  certain  limits  ;  that,  while 
Nature  will  permit  of  the  crossing  of  different  breeds  of  the 
same  animal,  and  so  will  admit  of  very  limited  variations  of 
structure,  she  will  not  admit  of  the  sexual  union  of  differ- 
ent species,  so  as  to  produce  individuals  having  a  union  of 
the  different  organisms,  or  a  resultant  of  a  third  organism 
of  a  different  type  from  any  that  had  preceded  it.  Is  it, 
for  example,  from  mere  taste  or  moral  feeling  that  such 
occurrences  as  the  sexual  union  between  man  and  beast 
have  not  been  known  to  have  produced  a  third  and  differ- 
ent animal  ?  We  know  that  it  is  because  the  Almighty  has 
*^ fixed  his  canon"  against  such  a  union  in  the  case  of  man 
and  in  the  cases  of  all  the  other  distinct  animal  organisms  ; 
and  to  find  this  canon  we  do  not  need  to  go  to  Scripture  or 
revelation,  although  we  may  find-  it  there  also. 


THE  INDIRECT  EVIDENCE.  189 

We  are  remitted,  therefore,  to  indirect  evidence,  and  in 
considering  this  evidence  we  have  to  note  that  we  have 
nothing  but  an  imaginary  pedigree,  or  one  hypothetically 
constructed,  to  which  to  apply  it.  In  tracing  the  pedigree 
of  an  individual  animal,  we  have  a  certain  number  of 
known  connections  of  life  with  life  ;  and  where  it  becomes 
necessary  to  bridge  over  a  break  in  the  connection  so  as  to 
carry  the  line  back  to  an  earlier  ancestor,  we  may  j)erhaps 
apply  the  collateral  evidence  of  family  or  race  resemblance 
to  assist  in  making  the  connection  with  that  particular 
ancestor  a  reasonably  safe  deduction.  But  in  the  case  of 
the  hypothetical  pedigree  which  supposes  the  human  race 
to  have  been  evolved  from  a  single  cell  through  successive 
organisms  rising  higher  and  higher  in  the  scale  of  being, 
we  have  no  known  connections  of  lives  with  lives  to  which 
to  apply  the  collateral  proofs.  The  collateral  proofs  are 
not  auxiliary  evidence ;  they  are  the  sole  evidence ;  and 
unless  they  are  such  as  to  exclude  every  other  reasonable 
explanation  of  the  phenomena  which  they  exhibit  except- 
ing that  of  the  supposed  evolution,  they  can  not  be  said  to 
satisfy  the  rules  of  rational  belief  in  the  hypothesis  to 
■which  we  apply  them. 

What,  then,  is  the  indirect  and  collateral  evidence  ?  It 
consists,  as  we  have  already  seen,  of  two  principal  classes 
of  phenomena :  first,  resemblances  of  foetal  development 
which  are  found  on  comparing  the  foetal  growth  of  differ- 
ent species  of  animals  ;  second,  resemblances  in  the  struct- 
ure of  different  species  of  animals  after  birth  and  maturity. 
These  various  resemblances  are  supposed  to  constitute  proof 
of  descent  from  a  common  stock,  which  may  be  carried 
back  in  the  series  as  far  as  the  resemblance  can  be  carried, 
at  whatever  point  that  may  be.  Thus,  in  comparing  all  the 
vertebrata,  we  find  certain  marked  peculiarities  of  struct- 
lire  common  to  the  whole  class  :  the  deduction  is,  that  all 
the  vertebrate  animals  came  from  a  common  stock.     In 


190  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

comparing  all  tlie  mammalia,  wo  find  certain  marked  pe- 
culiarities of  structure  common  to  the  whole  class  :  the  de- 
duction IS  that  all  the  mammalia  came  from  a  common 
stock.  Going  still  further  back  in  the  supposed  series,  we 
come  to  the  amphibians,  as  the  supposed  common  stock 
from  which  the  yertebrate  and  mammalian  land  animals 
were  derived ;  and,  comparing  the  different  classes  of  the 
amphibians,  we  find  certain  resemblances  which  point  to 
the  fish  inhabitants  of  the  water  as  their  common  stock ; 
and  then  we  trace  the  more  highly  organized  fishes  through 
the  more  lowly  organized  back  to  the  aquatic  worm,  which 
may  itself  be  supposed  to  have  been  developed  out  of  a 
single  cell.* 

The  resemblances  of  structure,  wherever  we  make  the 
comparison  between  different  species,  are  referable  to  an 
ideal  plan  of  animal  construction,  followed  throughout  a 
class  of  animals,  and  adjusted  to  their  peculiar  differences 
which  distinguish  one  species  from  another,  just  as  in  the 
vegetable  world  there  is  an  ideal  plan  of  construction  of 
trees  followed  throughout  a  class  of  plants,  and  adjusted  to 
the  peculiar  differences  which  distinguish  one  kind  of  tree 
from  another.  As  between  man  and  the  monkey,  or  be- 
tween man  and  the  horse,  or  the  seal,  or  the  bat,  or  the 
bird,  there  are  certain  resemblances  in  the  structure  of  the 
skeleton,  which  indicate  an  identity  of  plan,  although  va- 
ried in  its  adjustments  to  the  distinguishing  structure  of 
each  separate  species  of 'animal.  In  a  former  chapter,  I 
have  shown  why  the  adoption  of  an  ideal  plan  of  a  general 
character  is  consistent  with  what  I  have  called  the  *' econ- 
omy of  Nature  "  in  the  special  creation  of  different  species. 
On  a  careful  revision  of  the  subject,  I  can  see  no  reason  to 

*  See  the  table  of  the  Darwinian  pedigree  of  man,  ajite.  Any  other 
mode  of  arran^ng  the  order  of  evolution  that  will  admit  of  the  applica- 
tion of  the  steps  of  supposed  development  to  what  is  known  of  the  ani- 
mal kingdom,  will  equally  serve  to  illustrate  the  theory. 


BRAIN  OF  MAN  AND  THE  APE.  191 

change  the  expression,  or  to  modify  the  idea  which  it  was 
intended  fco  convey,  and  which  I  will  here  repeat.  It  is 
entirely  consistent  with  the  conception  of  an  infinite  and 
all- wise  creating  power,  to  suppose  that  in  the  formation 
of  a  large  class  of  organisms,  all  the  constructive  power 
that  was  needed  for  the  formation  of  a  general  plan  was 
exercised  throughout  the  class,  and  that  there  was  super- 
added the  exercise  of  all  the  power  of  variation  that  was 
needful  to  produce  distinct  species.  Kepetition  of  the  same 
general  plan  of  construction  is  certainly  no  mark  of  in- 
feriority of  original  power,  if  accompanied  by  adaptations 
to  new  and  further  conditions.  It  is  a  proof  that  in  one 
direction  all  the  necessary  power  was  used,  and  no  more, 
and  that  in  producing  the  distinct  organisms  the  necessary 
amount  of  further  power  was  also  used.  If  we  follow  the 
resemblances  of  structure  that  may  be  traced  through  all 
the  animals  of  a  varied  class,  we  shall  find  that  they  may 
be  referred,  as  a  rational  and  consistent  hypothesis,  to  this 
method  of  giving  to  each  animal  its  characteristic  forma- 
tion. If  this  is  a  rational  hypothesis,  it  is  so  because  it  is 
consistent  with  all  the  observable  phenomena  ;  and  con- 
sequently, the  opposite  hypothesis  that  all  these  phenomena 
of  resemblances  and  differences  are  due  to  the  law  of  evolu- 
tion does  not  exclude  every  other  explanation  of  their  ex- 
istence. 

To  apply  this  now  to  one  of  the  comparisons  on  which 
great  stress  is  laid — the  comparison  between  the  brain  of 
man  and  that  of  the  ape.  Two  questions  arise  in  this  com- 
parison :  1.  Do  the  resemblances  necessarily  show  that 
these  two  animals  came  from  a  common  stock  ?  2.  Do 
the  resemblances  necessarily  show  that  man  was  descended 
from  some  ape  through  intermediate  animals  by  gradual 
transformations  ?  And,  when  I  ask  whether  the  compari- 
son necessarily  leads  to  these  conclusions,  I  mean  to  ask 
whether  the  resemblances  point  so  strongly  to  the  conclu- 


192  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

sions  that  they  must  rationally  be  held  to  exclude  every 
other  hyi^othesis. 

Prof.  Huxley  furnished  to  Mr.  Darwin  a  very  learned 
note,  in  which  he  stated  the  results  of  all  that  is  now 
known  concerning  the  resemblances  and  differences  in 
the  structure  and  the  development  of  the  brain  in  man 
and  the  apes.  The  differences  may  be  laid  aside  in  the 
present  discussion,  because  it  is  not  necessary,  for  my  pres- 
ent purpose,  to  found  anything  upon  them.  But  the  re- 
semblances, just  as  they  are  stated  by  the  eminent  anat- 
omist, without  regard  to  controverted  details,  are  the  im- 
portant facts  to  be  considered.  The  substance  of  the 
whole  comparison  is  that  the  cerebral  hemispheres  in 
man  and  the  higher  apes  are  disposed  after  the  very  same 
pattern  in  him  as  in  them;  that  every  principal  "gyrus" 
and  *'  sulcus  "  of  a  chimpanzee's  brain  is  clearly  represented 
in  that  of  a  man,  so  that  the  terminology  which  applies  to 
one  answers  for  the  other  ;  that  there  is  no  dispute  as  to 
the  resemblance  in  fundamental  character  between  the 
ape's  brain  and  man's  ;  and  that  even  the  details  of  the 
arrangement  of  the  "gyri"  and  "sulci"  of  the  cerebral 
hemispheres  present  a  wonderfully  close  similarity  between 
the  chimpanzee,  orang,  and  man.*  These  are  said  to  be 
the  result  of  a  comparison  of  the  adult  brain  of  man  and 
the  higher  apes  ;  and,  although  it  is  claimed  by  some  anat- 
omists that  there  are  fundamental  differences  in  the  mode 
of  their  development  which  point  to  a  difference  of  origin, 
this  is  denied  by  Huxley,  who  maintains  that  there  is  a 
fundamental  agreement  in  the  development  of  the  brain  in 
man  and  apes.  His  views  of  the  facts  for  the  purpose  of 
the  present  inquiry  may  be  accepted  without  controversy, 
not  only  because  he  is  an  authority  whose  statements  of 
facts  I  am  not  disposed    to  dispute,   but  because  it  is 

*  Darwin's  "  Descent  of  Man,"  Prof.  Huxley's  note,  p.  1 99  rf  ticq. 


BRAIN  OF  MAN  AND  THE   APE.  I93 

not  necessary  to   dispute  them.      What,    then,    do  they 
show*  ? 

They  show  that  there  are  animals  known  as  apes  and 
animals  known  as  men,  whose  brains  are  found  to  be  fun- 
damentally constructed  upon  the  same  general  plan,  with 
strong  resemblances  throughout  the  different  parts  of  the 
organ  ;  and  the  first  question  is,  Do  these  resemblances  show 
that  the  two  animals  came  from  a  common  stock  ?  Upon 
the  theory  that  man  has  resulted  from  the  gradual  modifi- 
cations of  the  same  form  as  that  from  which  the  apes  have 
sprung,  the  resemblances  in  the  structure  of  their  respective 
brains  are  claimed  as  having  a  tendency  to  show  that  there 
was  an  animal  which  preceded  both  of  them,  and  which 
was  their  common  ancestor,  in  the  same  sense  in  which  an 
individual  progenitor  was  the  common  ancestor  of  two 
other  individuals,  whether  one  of  these  two  individuals 
was  or  was  not  descended  from  the  other  in  a  direct  line. 
On  the  other  hand,  upon  the  hypothesis  of  the  special  cre- 
ation of  the  ape  as  one  animal,  and  the  special  creation  of 
man  as  another  animal,  there  was  no  common  stock  from 
which  the  two  animals  have  been  derived,  and  the  resem- 
blances of  their  brains  point  to  the  adoption  of  a  general 
plan  of  construction  for  that  organ,  or  its  construction 
upon  the  same  model,  and  the  adaptation  of  that  model  to 
the  other  parts  of  the  structure,  and  the  purposes  of  the 
existence  of  each  of  the  two  animals.  Without  again  re- 
peating the  argument  which  shows  that  the  latter  hypothe- 
sis is  perfectly  consistent  with  the  professed  conception  of 
the  infinite  power,  I  will  now  inquire  whether,  on  the 
former  hypothesis,  we  have  anything  to  which  we  can  ap- 
ply the  evidence  of  resemblance  as  a  collateral  aid  in  reach- 
ing the  conclusion  that  these  two  animals  were  derived 
from  a  common  progenitor,  or  from  some  antecedent  ani- 
mal whose  brain  and  other  parts  of  the  structure  became 
modified  into  theirs  by  numerous  intermediate  gradations. 


194  OEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

Between  the  higher  apes,  or  between  any  of  the  apes  and 
any  known  antecedent  and  different  animal,  no  naturalist 
has  discovered  the  intermediate  link  or  links.  Darwin  sup- 
poses that  there  was  some  one  extremely  ancient  progenitor 
from  which  proceeded  the  two  main  divisions  of  the  Simiadm 
— namely,  the  Catarrhine  and  Platyrhine  monkeys,  with 
their  sub-groups.  This  extremely  ancient  progenitor  is  noth- 
ing but  a  scientific  hypothesis  ;  or,  to  use  a  legal  phrase,  it 
had  nothing  but  a  constructive  existence.  It  is  necessary  to 
believe  in  the  principle  of  evolution,  in  order  to  work  out 
the  hypothesis  of  this  creature  from  which  the  two  great 
stems  of  the  Simiadm  are  supposed  to  have  proceeded.  Here, 
then,  we  have  the  case  of  a  pedigree  or  succession  of  animal 
races,  the  propositum  of  which  has  no  known  existence. 
Next  we  have  two  known  divisions  of  the  SimiadcB,  or 
monkeys  ;  but,  between  them  and  their  imaginary  common 
progenitor,  we  have  no  known  intermediate  animals  consti- 
tuting the  gradations  of  structure  from  the  progenitor  to 
the  descendants.  The  whole  chain  has  to  be  made  out  by 
tracing  resemblances  among  the  animals  of  a  certain  class 
that  are  known,  then  applying  these  resemblances  to  the 
supposed  divergencies  from  the  structure  of  a  supposed 
progenitor,  and  then  drawing  the  conclusion  that  there 
was  such  a  progenitor.  It  may  be  submitted  to  the 
common  sense  of  mankind,  whether  this  is  a  state  of  facts 
which  will  warrant  scientists  or  philosophers  in  using  to- 
ward those  who  do  not  accept  their  theory  quite  so  much  of 
the  de  Jiaut  en  ias  style  of  remark  as  we  find  in  the  writings 
of  Mr.  Spencer.*    If  the  researches  of  geologists  had  ever 

*  Mr.  Spencer  observes  that  the  hypothesis  of  special  creations  is  one 
"  which  formulates  absolute  ignorance  into  a  semblance  of  positive  knowl- 
edge.  .  .  .  Thus,  however  regarded,  the  hypothesis  of  special  creations 
turns  out  to  be  worthless— worthless  by  its  derivation ;  worthless  in  its  in- 
trinsic incoherence ;  worthless  as  absolutely  without  evidence ;  worthless  as 
not  satisfying  a  moral  want,  .  We  must  therefore  consider  it  as  counting 


BRAIN  OF  MAN  AND  THE  APE.  195 

discovered  any  remains  of  an  animal  that  would  fulfill  the 
requirements,  and  thus  stand  as  the  progenitor  of  the 
SimiadcBy  the  case  would  correspond  to  that  of  a  known  in- 
dividual from  whom  we  undertake  to  trace  the  descent  of 
another  individual  through  many  intermediates ;  and  in 
such  a  case  strong  family  resemblances  of  various  kinds 
might  possibly  afford  some  aid  in  making  out  the  pedigree 
as  a  reliable  conclusion.  But  there  is  no  means  of  connect- 
ing the  Old  World  and  the  New  World  ape3  with  any  but 
an  unknown  and  imaginary  progenitor.  Darwin  himself 
frankly  tells  us  that  "the  early  progenitor  of  the  whole 
Simian  stock,  including  man,"  is  an  undiscovered  animal, 
which  may  not  have  been  identical  with,  or  may  not  eveu 
have  closely  resembled,  any  existing  ape  or  monkey.* 

Passing  from  the  supposed  common  progenitor  to  the 
resemblances  between  the  brain  of  the  higher  apes  and  the 
brain  of  man,  we  come  to  the  question  whether  these  re- 
semblances show  that  man  was  descended  from  any  of  the 
Simian  stock  through  intermediate  animals  by  gradual 
transformation.  Here  the  case  is  in  one  respect  different ; 
for  the  animals  that  are  to  be  compared  are  known,  and 
their  respective  brains  have  been  subjected  to  close  anatomi- 
cal scrutiny.  This  part  of  the  process  of  evolution  begins 
from  one  true  species,  the  ape,  and  ends  in  another  true 

for  nothing,  in  opposition  to  any  other  hypothesis  respecting  the  origin  of 
organic  beings."  There  is  a  great  deal  more  in  the  same  tone.  (See  "  Bi- 
ology," i,  pp.  344,  345,  and  passim  throughout  Chapters  II  and  III  of  Part 
in  of  that  work.)  Mr.  Darwin,  who  is  sufficiently  positive,  is  much  more 
moderate,  and  in  my  opinion  a  much  better  reasoner,  although  I  can  not 
subscribe  to  his  reasoning  or  his  conclusions.  A  rather  irreverent  naval 
officer  of  my  acquaintance  once  extolled  a  doctrinal  sermon,  which  he  had 
just  heard  preached  by  a  Unitarian  clergyman,  in  this  fashion :  "  I  tell  you 
what,  sir,  the  preacher  did  not  leave  the  Trinity  a  leg  to  stand  upon." 
Probably  some  of  Mr.  Spencer's  readers  think  that  he  has  equally  demol- 
ished the  doctrine  of  special  creations. 
*  "Descent  of  Man,"  p.  155. 
10 


196  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

species,  the  man.  We  are  unable  to  trace  the  man  and  the 
ape  to  a  common  progenitor  race ;  but  we  find  the  ape  pos- 
sessed of  a  brain  which  strongly  resembles  man's.  I  haye 
searched  diligently  in  the  writings  of  naturalists  for  a  sound 
reason  which  ought  rationally  to  exclude  the  hypothesis 
that  the  brain  of  the  ape  was  formed  upon  the  same  ideal 
plan  as  the  brain  of  man,  each  animal  being  a  distinct  spe- 
cies and  separately  created.  Anatomical  comparison  of  the 
two  brains  shows  that,  whether  they  were  separately  planned 
upon  the  same  general  model,  or  the  one  was  derived  from 
the  other  by  a  process  of  gradual  transformation  through 
successive  intermediate  animals,  the  resemblances  are  con- 
sistent with  either  hypothesis.  We  are  remitted,  therefore, 
to  an  inquiry  for  the  evidence  which  will  establish  the 
existence  of  a  race  or  races  of  animals  through  whom  there 
descended  to  man  the  peculiar  structure  of  brain  found  in 
one  of  the  classes  of  apes — namely,  the  Catarrhine  or  Old 
World  monkeys.  If  such  intermediate  races  could  be 
found,  their  existence  at  any  period  anterior  to  the  period 
of  man's  appearance  on  earth  would  have  some  tendency 
to  show  that  man  was  descended  from  one  of  the  families 
of  apes,  and  this  tendency  would  become  stronger  in  pro- 
portion to  the  number  of  successive  links  in  the  family 
chain  that  could  be  made  out.  But  not  one  of  these  links 
is  known  to  have  existed.  There  is  an  assumption  that 
man,  "from  a  genealogical  point  of  view,  belongs  to  the 
Catarrhine  or  Old  World  stock  "  of  monkeys  ;  and  this  as- 
sumption is  claimed  to  be  supported  by  the  fact  that  the 
character  of  his  brain  is  fundamentally  the  same  as  theirs. 

A  brain  is  an  organ  which,  upon  the  hjrpothesis  of  an 
independent  creation  of  distinct  species  of  animals, 'would 
be  expected  to  be  found  in  very  numerous  species,  although 
they  might  differ  widely  from  each  other.  In  all  the  ver- 
tebrate animals  this  organ  is  the  one  from  which,  by  its 
connection  with  the  spinal  chord,  the  central  portion  of  the 


OFFICE  OF  A  BRAIN.  197 

nervous  system,  that  system  descends  through  the  arches  of 
the  Yertebrae,  and  thence  radiates  to  the  various  other  or- 
gans of  the  body.  The  brain  is  the  central  seat  of  sensa- 
tion, to  which  are  transmitted,  along  certain  nerves,  the 
impressions  produced  upon  or  arising  in  the  other  organs  ; 
and  it  is  the  source  from  which  voluntary  activity  is  trans- 
mitted along  other  nerves  to  organs  and  muscles  that  are 
subjected  to  a  power  of  movement  from  within.  The  oflBce 
which  such  an  organ  performs  in  a  complex  piece  of  animal 
mechanism  is  therefore  the  same  in  all  the  vertebrate  ani- 
mals in  which  it  is  found ;  and  it  would  necessarily  be 
found  to  be  constructed  upon  the  same  uniform  plan,  and 
with  just  the  degree  of  uniformity  and  adaptation  which 
would  fit  it  to  perform  its  office  in  the  particular  species  of 
animal  to  which  it  might  be  given.  In  point  of  fact,  we 
find  this  office  of  the  brain  performed  in  all  the  vertebrate 
animals  upon  the  same  uniform  plan,  with  the  necessary 
adaptations  to  the  various  structures  of  the  different  ani- 
mals. Resemblances,  therefore,  in  the  convolutions  of  differ- 
ent parts  of  this  organ,  as  found  in  different  vertebrate  ani- 
mals, however  close  they  may  be,  prove  nothing  more  than 
the  adoption  of  a  general  plan  for  the  production  of  objects 
common  to  the  whole  class  of  the  vertebrate  animals  ;  and 
unless  we  can  find  other  and  independent  proof  that  one 
species  was  descended  from  another  by  connection  of  lives 
with  lives  through  successive  generations,  the  hypothesis  of 
special  creations  of  the  different  species  is  not  excluded  by 
the  facts. 

Let  us  now  further  examine  the  supposed  kinship  of 
man  with  the  monkey,  as  evidenced  by  the  similarity  of 
the  structure  of  the  brains  of  the  two  animals,  in  reference 
to  the  supposed  process  of  evolution  as  the  means  of  ac- 
counting for  the  origin  of  two  species  so  essentially  distinct. 
How  has  it  happened  that  different  species  have  become 
completed  and  final  types,  transmitting,  after  •  they  have 


198  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

become  completed,  one  and  the  same  type,  by  the  ordinary 
process  of  generation,  and  not  admitting  of  the  sexual 
union  with  any  other  distinct  species  ?  On  the  theory  of 
the  evolution  of  animal  out  of  animal,  we  must  suppose 
that  at  some  time  the  secondary  causes  of  natural  and  sex- 
ual selection  have  done  their  work.  It  ends  in  the  produc- 
tion of  a  species  which  thereafter  remains  one  and  the 
same  animal,  and  Nature  has  established  a  barrier  to  any 
sexual  union  with  any  other  species.  If  we  give  the  rein 
to  our  imaginations,  and,  taking  the  process  of  evolution  as 
it  is  described  to  us,  suppose  that  in  the  long  course  of 
countless  ages  the  struggle  for  existence  among  very  nu- 
merous individuals  has  led  to  gradual  transformations  of 
structure  which  the  sexual  selection  has  transmitted  to 
offspring,  and  so  a  new  animal  has  at  length  been  formed 
through  the  successive  "  survivals  of  the  fittest,"  we  reach 
an  animal  of  a  new  species,  and  that  species,  under  no  cir- 
cumstances, produces  any  type  but  its  own,  so  far  as  we  have 
any  means  of  knowledge.  All  the  knowledge  respecting 
the  ape  that  has  been  accumulated  shows  only  that  this 
species  of  animal,  since  it  became  a  completed  type,  has 
procreated  its  own  type  and  no  other.  Whatever  struggle 
for  existence  the  individuals  of  this  type  have  had  to  under- 
go, whatever  modifications  of  structure  or  habits  of  life 
the  survival  of  the  fittest  individuals  of  this  type  may  have 
produced  from  the  earliest  imaginable  period  until  the  pres- 
ent time,  the  fact  remains  that  this  species  of  animal  is  a 
completed  and  final  product.  At  the  same  time  we  have 
another  completed  and  final  type  of  animal  known  as  man, 
which,  so  long  as  he  has  been  known  at  all-,  is  a  distinct 
and  peculiar  species.  Between  the  brain  of  this  animal  and 
the  brain  of  the  other  we  find  certain  strong  resemblances. 
In  each  of  them  this  organ  is  a  structure  performing  the 
same  ofiice  in  the  animal  mechanism,  with  adaptations  pe- 
culiar to  the  varying  structure  of  each  of  them.     In  order 


KINSHIP  OF  MAN  AND  THE  APES.  199 

to  justify  the  conclusion  that  the  one  animal  is  a  modified 
descendant  from  the  other,  so  as  to  exclude  the  hypothesis 
that  the  resemblances  of  any  one  or  of  all  of  their  respective 
organs  was  a  result  of  the  adoption  of  a  general  plan  in 
special  creations  of  distinct  species,  we  ought  to  find  some 
instance  or  instances  in  which  the  completed  animal  called 
the  ape  has  been  developed  into  an  animal  approaching 
more  nearly  to  man  than  the  man,  as  he  is  first  known  to 
us,  approached  to  the  first  ape  that  is  known  to  us.  With- 
out such  intermediate  connections,  the  analogy  of  the  de- 
scent of  individuals  from  other  individuals  of  the  same 
species  will  not  hold.  There  is  nothing  left  but  resem- 
blances of  structure  in  one  or  more  organs,  which  are  just 
as  consistent  with  the  hypothesis  of  special  creations  as 
with  that  of  evolution.  Strong  resemblances  of  structure 
and  in  the  oflBces  of  different  organs  may  be  found  between 
man  and  the  horse,  but  upon  no  theory  of  evolution  has  it 
been  suggested  that  man  is  descended  from  the  horse,  or 
from  any  other  animal  to  which  he  bears  more  or  less  re- 
semblance, excepting  the  monkey  ;  and  it  is  quite  possible 
that  naturalists  have  been  led  unconsciously  to  make  this 
exception  by  external  resemblances  of  the  monkey  and  the 
man,  by  the  imitative  power  of  the  inferior  animal  when  it 
comes  in  contact  with  man,  and  by  some  of  its  habits  when 
found  in  its  wild  and  native  haunts. 


CHAPTEE  VI. 

The  doctrine  of  evolution,  according  to  Herbert  Spencer,  further  considered. 

I]sr  the  last  two  preceding  chapters  I  haye  examined 
what  Mr.  Spencer  regards  as  the  direct  supports  of  the  doc- 
trine of  evolution.  I  have  now  to  consider  the  different 
orders  of  facts  which,  as  he  claims,  yield  to  it  indirect 
support.  These  are  the  facts  derived  from  classification, 
from  embryology,  from  morphology,  and  from  distribution. 
An  explanation  is  here  needful  of  the  sense  in  which  he 
uses  these  respective  terms,  before  the  reader,  who  is  not 
accustomed  to  them,  is  called  upon  to  understand  and  ap- 
preciate the  argument : 

1.  By  classification  is  meant  an  arrangement  of  organic 
beings  in  some  systematic  manner,  according  to  attributes 
which  they  have  in  common,  and  which  may  form  the 
principle  of  a  division  into  different  classes  or  families. 
Pointing  out  that  in  the  early  history  of  botanical  and 
zoological  science  the  tendency  was  to  make  classifications 
according  to  a  single  characteristic,  Mr.  Spencer  reminds 
us  that  later  naturalists,  by  attending  to  a  greater  number 
of  characteristics,  and  finally  to  the  greatest  number  that 
can  be  found  to  be  common  to  various  classes  of  vegetable 
and  animal  organisms,  have  constructed  systems  of  classifi- 
cation which,  in  place  of  a  linear  or  a  serial  order,  have 
exhibited  the  alliances  of  different  groups,  then  the  sub- 
groups, and  the  sub-sub-groups,  so  that  the  divergences 
and  redivergences  become  developed,  while  the  resemblances 


EMBRYOLOGY.  201 

which  obtain  are  preserved  throughout  the  whole  class. 
But  it  is  at  once  apparent  that,  although  classification,  on 
whatever  principle  it  is  conducted,  may  be  valuable  as  a 
means  of  fixing  in  the  mind  the  resemblances  or  differences 
of  structure  that  obtain  in  the  different  orders  of  organ- 
ized beings,  as,  for  example,  among  the  vertebrate  or  the 
invertebrate  animals,  the  flowering  or  the  flowerless  plants, 
the  seeds  naked  or  the  seeds  inclosed  in  seed-vessels,  yet 
that  any  other  system  of  classification,  based  upon  other 
resemblances  or  differences  which  actually  present  means 
of  grouping  or  separating  the  different  families  of  organized 
beings,  is  just  as  valuable  an  aid  in  the  investigation  of  facts. 
How  far  any  classification  affords  an  argument,  or  the  means 
of  constructing  an  argument,  which  will  yield  a  support  to 
the  doctrine  of  evolution  superior  to  that  which  it  yields  to 
the  doctrine  of  special  creations,  is  of  course  a  question. 

2.  Embryology  :  This  is  the  term  employed  to  express 
that  branch  of  inquiry  which  is  concerned  in  a  comparison 
of  the  increase  of  different  organisms  through  the  stages  of 
their  embryonic  life,  and  in  noting  at  different  stages  of 
this  growth  the  characters  which  they  have  in  common 
with  each  other;  the  resemblances  of  structure  which  at 
corresponding  phases  of  a  later  embryonic  stage  are  dis- 
played by  a  less  extensive  multitude  of  organisms  ;  and  so 
on  step  by  step,  until  we  find  the  class  of  resembling  em- 
bryos becoming  narrower  and  narrower,  and  then  we  finally 
end  in  the  species  of  which  a  particular  embryo  is  a  member. 
This  process  of  tracing  and  eliminating  embryonic  resem- 
blances is  said  to  have  '*a  profound  significance"  ;  because, 
beginning  with  a  great  multitude  of  resemblances  between 
the  embryonic  development  of  different  organisms,  it  re- 
veals the  divergences  which  they  take  on,  and  through  every 
successive  step  we  find  new  divergences,  by  means  of  which 
"  we  may  construct  an  embryological  tree,  expressing  the 
developmental  relations  of  the  organisms,  resembling  the 


202  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

tree  which  symbolizes  their  classificatory  relations."  "We 
thus  arrive  at  "  that  subordination  of  classes,  orders,  gen- 
era and  species,  to  which  naturalists  have  been  gradually 
led,"  and  which  is  said  to  be  "that  subordination  which 
results  from  the  divergence  and  redivergence  of  embryos, 
as  they  all  unfold."*  On  this  mode  of  comparing  the 
embryonic  development  of  different  organized  beings  Mr. 
Spencer  builds  a  scientific  parallelism,  which  indicates,  as 
he  claims,  a  "primordial  kinship  of  all  organisms,"  and  a 
"progressive  differentiation  of  them,"  which  justifies  a  be- 
lief in  an  original  stock  from  which  they  have  all  been  de- 
rived. In  what  way  this  method  of  investigation  destroys 
or  tends  to  destroy  the  hypothesis  of  special  creations,  or 
how  it  affords  an  important  support  to  the  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution, will  be  considered  hereafter,  f 

3.  Morphology,  or  the  science  of  form,  involves  a  com- 
parison of  the  structure  of  different  organisms  in  their 
mature  state  ;  an  ascertainment  of  the  resemblances  between 
their  structures,  and  of  the  community  of  plan  that  exists 
between  them.  Here,  as  in  the  aids  derived  from  classifi- 
cation and  embryology,  it  is  claimed  that  the  fundamental 
likenesses  of  forms  of  structure  have  a  meaning  which  is 
altogether  inconsistent  with  the  hypothesis  of  predetermined 

*  "  Biology,"  i,  p.  366. 

f  "  In  the  presence  of  the  various  genealogical  trees  of  animal  descent 
which  have  been  put  forward  so  frequently  of  late,  a  judicious  skepticism 
seems  the  attitude  best  warranted  by  the  evidence  yet  obtained.  If  so 
many  similar  forms  have  arisen  in  mutual  independence,  then  the  affinities 
of  the  animal  kingdom  can  never  be  represented  by  the  symbol  of  a  tree. 
Rather,  wc  should  conceive  of  the  existence  of  a  grove  of  trees,  closely  ap- 
proximated, greatly  differing  in  age  and  size,  with  their  branches  interlaced 
in  a  most  complex  entanglement.  The  great  group  of  apes  is  composed  of 
two  such  branches ;  but  their  relations  one  to  another,  to  the  other  branches 
which  represent  mammalian  groups,  and  to  the  trunks  from  which  such 
branches  diverge,  are  problems  still  awaiting  solution." — "  Mtq/dopadia 
Briiannica"  article  "ApeaJ*^ 


DISTEIBUTIOK  203 

typical  plans  pursued  throughout  immensely  vajied  forms 
of  organisms. 

4.  Distribution  :  This  is  the  term  applied  to  the  phe- 
nomena exhibited  by  the  presence  of  different  organisms  in 
different  localities  of  the  globe  ;  or,  as  Mr.  Spencer  phrases 
it,  "the  phenomena  of  distribution  in  space."  These  phe- 
nomena are  very  various.  Sometimes,  it  is  said,  we  find 
adjacent  territories,  with  similar  conditions,  occupied  by 
quite  different  faunas.  In  other  regions,  we  find  closely 
allied  faunas  in  areas  remote  from  each  other  in  latitude, 
and  contrasted  in  both  soil  and  climate.  The  reasoning,  as 
given  by  Mr.  Darwin  and  adopted  by  Mr.  Spencer,  is  this  : 
that  "  as  like  organisms  are  not  universally  or  even  gener- 
ally found  in  like  habitats,  nor  very  unlike  organisms  in 
very  unlike  habitats,  there  is  no  predetermined  adapta- 
tion of  the  organisms  to  the  habitats."  "In  other  words," 
Mr.  Spencer  adds,  "the  facts  of  distribution  in  space  do 
not  conform  to  the  hypothesis  of  design."  The  reason  why 
they  do  not  is  claimed  to  be  that  there  are  impassable  bar- 
riers between  the  similar  areas  which  are  peopled  by  dissim- 
ilar forms  ;  whereas  there  are  no  such  barriers  between  the 
dissimilar  areas  which  are  peopled  by  dissimilar  forms. 
The  conclusion  is,  "  that  each  species  of  organism  tends  ever 
to  expand  its  sphere  of  existence — to  intrude  on  other  areas, 
other  modes  of  life,  other  media."  That  is  to  say,  there  is  a 
constant  competition  among  races  of  organisms  for  posses- 
sion of  the  fields  in  which  they  can  find  the  means  of  sub- 
sistence and  expansion  ;  and  this  leads  to  new  modes  of  ex- 
istence, new  media  of  life,  new  structures  and  new  habitats. 

The  reader  can  now  retrace  his  steps,  and  advert  to  the 
facts  that  are  relied  upon,  under  the  four  heads  of  the  ar- 
gument : 

1.  With  regard  to  the  argument  derived  from  classifica- 
tion :  it  is  to  be  observed  that  any  system  of  classification 
is  in  a  certain  sense  artificial,  and  at  all  events  is  manifestly 


204  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION  I 

conventional.  But,  in  order  that  no  injustice  may  be  done 
to  this  branch  of  the  argument  for  evolution,  I  shall  state 
it  in  its  full  force.  The  classifications  which  naturalists 
make  of  the  different  organized  beings  according  to  their 
resemblances  and  differences  reveal  the  fact  of  unity  amid 
multiformity.  This  fact  it  is  said  points  to  propinquity  of 
descent,  ''which  is  the  only  known  cause  of  the  similarity 
of  organic  beings."  It  is  the  bond,  hidden  indeed  by  vari- 
ous degrees  of  modification,  but  nevertheless  revealed  to 
us  by  the  classifications  which  display  the  resemblances. 
Again,  we  have,  it  is  said,  in  the  influence  of  various  con- 
ditions of  animated  organisms,  ''  the  only  known  cause  of 
divergence  of  structure."  Classification  reveals  to  us  these 
divergences.  We  have,  then,  the  bond  of  resemblances 
which  indicate  propinquity  of  descent,  and  the  divergences 
of  structure  produced  by  varying  conditions  of  life.  Put 
the  two  together,  and  we  have  remarkable  harmonies  of 
likenesses  obscured  by  unlikenesses ;  and  to  this  state  of 
facts  it  is  claimed  that  no  consistent  interpretation  can  be 
given,  without  the  hypothesis  that  the  likenesses  and  the 
unlikenesses  were  produced  by  the  evolution  of  organisms 
out  of  organisms  by  successive  generation,  through  a  great 
lapse  of  time. 

This  argument  contains  no  inconsiderable  amount  of  as- 
sumption. "While  it  may  be  true  that  some  naturalists  do 
not  assign  any  cause  for  the  similarity  which  obtains  among 
organic  beings  excepting  their  descent  from  a  common  ances- 
tral stock,  it  is  not  true  that  the  similarity  of  structure  is 
inconsistent  with  the  hypothesis  of  another  cause,  namely, 
the  adoption  of  a  general  plan  of  structure  for  a  large  class 
of  organisms,  and  an  intentional  variation  in  those  parts  of 
structure  which  mark  the  divisions  of  that  class  into  species 
that  are  very  unlike.  It  is  true  that  evolutionists  treat  with 
scorn  the  idea  of  a  pattern  of  structure  followed  throughout 
a  class  of  animals,  but  made  by  designed  adaptations  to 


THE  TWENTY-SEGMENTS  ILLUSTRATION.       205 

coalesce  with  differences  that  mark  the  peculiarities  which 
distinguish  one  organism  of  that  class  from  all  the  others. 
Mr.  Spencer,  for  example,  observes  that  "  to  say  that  the 
Creator  followed  a  pattern  throughout,  merely  for  the  pur- 
pose of  maintaining  the  pattern,  is  to  assign  a  motive  which, 
if  avowed  by  a  human  being,  we  should  call  whimsical." 

Let  us  now  follow  this  mode  of  disposing  of  the  hypoth- 
esis of  special  creations,  by  adverting  to  some  of  the  facts 
that  are  adduced  in  its  summary  condemnation  ;  and,  al- 
though the  passage  which  I  am  about  to  quote  is  found  in 
Mr.  Spencer's  work  under  the  head  of  morphology,  the 
illustration  applies  equally  well  to  his  argument  from  classi- 
fication. Speaking  of  fundamental  likenesses  of  structure, 
he  says  :  "Under  the  immensely  varied  forms  of  insects, 
greatly  elongated  like  the  dragon-fly,  or  contracted  in 
shape  like  the  lady-bird,  winged  like  the  butterfly,  or 
wingless  like  the  flea,  we  find  this  character  in  common — 
there  are  primarily  twenty  segments.  These  segments  may 
be  distinctly  marked,  or  they  may  be  so  fused  as  to  make  it 
difficult  to  find  the  divisions  between  them.  This  is  not 
all.  It  has  been  shown  that  the  same  number  of  segments 
is  possessed  by  all  the  Crustacea,  The  highly  consolidated 
crab,  and  the  squilla  with  its  long,  loosely-jointed  divisions, 
are  composed  of  the  same  number  of  somites.  Though,  in 
the  higher  crustaceans,  some  of  these  successive  indurated 
rings,  forming  the  exo-skeleton,  are  never  more  than  par- 
tially marked  off  from  each  other,  yet  they  are  identifia- 
ble as  homologous  with  segments,  which,  in  other  crustace- 
ans, are  definitely  divided.  What,  now,  can  be  the  mean- 
ing of  this  community  of  structure  among  these  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  species  filling  the  air,  burrowing  in  the 
earth,  swimming  in  the  water,  creeping  about  among  the 
sea-weed,  and  having  such  enormous  differences  of  size, 
outline,  and  substance,  as  that  no  community  would  be 
suspected  between  them  ?    Why,  under  the  down-covered 


206  OEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

body  of  the  moth  and  under  the  hard  wing-cases  of  the 
beetle,  should  there  be  discovered  the  same  number  of  di- 
Tisions  as  in  the  calcareous  framework  of  the  lobster  ? 
It  can  not  be  by  chance  that  there  exist  just  twenty  seg- 
ments in  all  these  hundreds  of  thousands  of  species.  There 
is  no  reason  to  think  it  was  necessary,  in  the  sense  that  no 
other  number  would  have  made  a  possible  organism.  And 
to  say  that  it  is  the  result  of  design — to  say  that  the  Crea- 
tor followed  this  pattern  throughout,  merely  for  the  pur- 
pose of  maintaining  the  pattern — is  to  assign  a  motive 
which,  if  avowed  by  a  human  being,  we  should  call  whim- 
sical. No  rational  interpretation  of  this,  and  hosts  of  like 
morphological  truths,  can  be  given  except  by  the  hypothe- 
sis of  evolution ;  and  from  the  hypothesis  of  evolution 
they  are  corollaries.  If  organic  forms  have  arisen  from 
common  stocks  by  perpetual  divergences  and  rediver- 
gences — if  they  have  continued  to  inherit,  more  or  less 
clearly,  the  characters  of  ancestral  races,  then  there  will 
naturally  result  these  communities  of  fundamental  struct- 
ure among  extensive  assemblages  of  creatures,  that  have 
severally  become  modified  in  countless  ways  and  degrees, 
in  adaptation  to  their  respective  modes  of  life.  To  this 
let  it  be  added  that,  while  the  belief  in  an  intentional 
adhesion  to  a  predetermined  pattern  throughout  a  whole 
group  is  totally  negatived  by  the  occurrence  of  occasional 
deviations  from  the  pattern,  such  deviations  are  reconcil- 
able with  the  belief  in  evolution.  As  pointed  out  in  the 
last  chapter,  there  is  reason  to  think  that  remote  ancestral 
traits  will  be  obscured  more  or  less  according  as  the  super- 
posed modifications  of  structure  have  or  have  not  been 
great  or  long  maintained.  Hence,  though  the  occurrence 
of  articulate  animals,  such  as  spiders  and  mites,  having 
fewer  than  twenty  segments,  is  fatal  to  the  supposition 
that  twenty  segments  was  decided  on  for  the  three  groups 
of  superior  Articulata,  it  is  not  incongruous  with  the 


VALUES  OF  A  GIVEN  PATTERN.  207 

supposition  that  some  primitive  races  of  articulate  animals 
bequeathed  to  these  three  groups  this  common  typical  char- 
acter— a  character  which  has  nevertheless,  in  many  cases, 
become  greatly  obscured,  and  in  some  of  the  most  aberrant 
orders  of  these  classes  quite  lost."* 

Whatever  may  be  the  explanation  suggested  by  one  or 
another  hypothesis  as  to  the  mode  in  which  this  uniformity 
of  structure  came  to  exist,  it  is  certain  that  it  does  exist. 
Twenty  segments  are  found  in  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
species  which  are  immensely  different  from  each  other  in 
size,  outline,  substance  and  modes  of  existence.  Here,  then, 
is  a  plan.  There  is  a  pattern,  on  which  all  these  different 
organisms  are  constructed  with  a  common  peculiarity.  It 
is  averred  that  this  could  not  have  been  the  result  of  design, 
because  this  would  be  to  impute  to  the  Creator  a  whimsical 
motive,  namely,  that  he  followed  the  pattern  throughout 
a  vast  group  of  different  organisms  merely  for  the  purpose 
of  following  it.  On  the  contrary,  it  may  be  contended 
that  this  uniformity  of  plan,  this  repeated  pattern,  affords 
the  highest  probable  evidence  of  design ;  and  that  the 
supposed  whimsicality  of  motive  wiU  entirely  disappear  as 
soon  as  we  reach  a  purpose  which  may  have  had  very  solid 
reasons  for  this  uniformity  of  structure.  "When  we  reason 
about  the  works  of  the  Creator,  we  are  reasoning  about  the 
methods  of  a  being  who,  we  must  suppose,  is  governed  by  a 
purpose  in  all  that  he  does.  In  reasoning  about  the  meth- 
ods of  such  a  being,  it  is  entirely  unphilosophical  to  suppose 
that  he  has  done  anything  merely  for  the  sake  of  doing  it, 
or  for  the  sake  of  exercising  or  displaying  his  powers  in 
repetitions  that  had  no  practical  value.  In  order  to  reason 
consistently  with  the  supposed  attributes  of  the  Creator, 
we  should  endeavor  to  find  the  value  of  any  given  pattern 
which  we  discover  in  a  certain  very  large  class  of  organisms 
differing  widely  from  each  other  in  other  respects  ;  and  in 

*"Biology,"i,  pp.  380-382. 


208  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

order  to  find  that  value  it  is  by  no  means  essential  to  make 
out  that  the  particular  plan  of  construction  was  necessary 
to  the  making  of  any  organism  whatever.  The  true  ques- 
tion is,  not  whether  twenty  segments  were  necessary  to  the 
construction  of  any  organism,  but  whether,  in  each  of  the 
different  species,  this  peculiar  number  of  divisions  was  use- 
ful to  each  particular  organism.  If  naturalists  of  the  evo- 
lution school,  instead  of  looking  at  everything  through 
the  medium  of  a  certain  theory,  would  in  their  dissection, 
for  example,  of  the  framework  of  the  lobster,  the  body  of 
the  moth,  and  the  body  of  the  beetle,  furnish  us  with  facts 
which  would  show  that  these  twenty  divisions  are  of  no  use 
either  for  strength,  or  resistance,  or  suppleness,  or  adapta- 
tion to  what  is  contained  within  them,  we  should  have  a 
body  of  evidence  that  could  be  claimed  as  tending  to  over- 
throw the  hypothesis  of  intentional  design.  They  might 
then  speak  of  the  repetition  of  this  pattern  as  whimsical, 
upon  the  hypothesis  that  it  was  a  repetition  by  design.  But 
so  little  is  done  by  this  class  of  naturalists  to  give  due  con- 
sideration to  the  value  of  such  repetitionsj  and  so  little  heed 
is  paid  to  the  truth  that  the  Creator  does  nothing  that  is 
useless — a  truth  which  all  sound  philosophy  must  assume, 
because  it  is  a  necessary  corollary  from  the  attributes  of  the 
Creator — that  we  are  left  without  the  aid  which  we  might 
expect  from  these  specialists  in  natural  science.  Is  it,  then, 
impossible  to  discover,  or  even  to  suggest,  that  for  each  of 
these  organisms  this  number  of  twenty  divisions  had  a 
value  ?  If  they  were  of  no  value,  we  may  safely  conclude 
that  they  would  never  have  existed,  unless  we  ignore  the 
hypothesis  of  infinite  wisdom  and  skill.  That  hypothesis 
is  a  postulate  without  which  we  can  not  reason  on  the  case 
at  all.  With  it,  we  have  as  a  starting-point  the  conception 
of  a  being  of  infinite  perfections,  who  does  nothing  idly, 
nothing  from  whim,  nothing  from  caprice,  and  nothing 
that  is  without  value  to  the  creature  in  which  it  is  found. 


INFINITY  OF  CHANCES  AGAINST  THE  THEORY.  209 

So  that,  while  we  can  not  in  all  cases  as  yet  assign  that 
value,  we  have  the  strongest  reasons  for  believing  that 
there  is  a  value  ;  and,  instead  of  asserting  that  an  extensive 
community  of  structure  throughout  a  great  branch  of  the 
animal  kingdom  has  no  meaning  excepting  upon  the  doc- 
trine of  evolution,  it  is  the  part  of  true  science  to  assume 
that  it  may  have  another  meaning,  and  to  discover  if  pos- 
sible what  that  other  meaning  is.  This  is  the  part  of  true 
science,  because  it  is  the  part  of  sound  philosophy.  There 
is  another  remark  to  be  made  upon  Mr.  Spencer's  reason- 
ing on  this  particular  case  of  a  community  of  pattern. 
He  says  that  it  can  not  be  imputed  to  chance.  It  was,  then, 
either  an  intentional  design,  or  it  came  about  through  the 
process  of  descent  "from  common  stocks,  which  process 
was  at  the  same  time  producing  perpetual  divergences  and 
redivergences. "  Without  turning  aside  for  the  present  to 
ask  from  how  many  common  stocks,  it  may  be  shown  as 
in  the  highest  degi'ee  probable  that  the  occasional  deviations 
from  the  pattern  did  not  arise  by  the  evolution  process,  be- 
cause that  process  has  in  itself  an  element  of  chance  which  is 
fatal  to  the  theory.  The  assertion  is  that  "  an  intentional 
adhesion  to  a  predetermined  plan  throughout  a  whole  group 
is  totally  negatived  by  the  occurrence  of  occasional  devia- 
tions from  the  pattern."  Let  this  assertion  be  examined  first 
in  the  light  of  facts,  and  secondly  by  the  absence  of  facts. 

The  hypothesis  is  that  some  primitive  race  of  articulated 
animals,  possessed  by  some  means  of  the  twenty  segments, 
transmitted  this  ancestral  trait  to  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
species  having  no  community  of  structure  in  other  respects. 
Unfortunately  for  the  theory,  no  figures  can  measure  the 
chances  against  the  preservation  of  a  single  pattern  through 
such  a  multitude  of  differing  organisms  descending  from 
a  common  stock.  Infinity  alone  can  express  the  chances 
against  such  a  result.  While,  according  to  the  theory,  the 
deviations  from  the  original  type  were  constantly  working 


210  OEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

out  new  organisms  of  the  most  diversified  forms,  until  there 
came  to  be  hundreds  of  thousands  of  new  species  differing 
from  each  other  in  all  but  this  one  peculiarity — a  diyersity 
which  is  supposed  to  have  been  caused  by  the  fundamental 
law  of  evolution — ^how  did  it  happen  that  the  same  law  did 
not  break  this  uniformity  of  articulation  ?  If  it  was  potent 
enough  to  differentiate  the  enormous  multitude  of  these 
animals  in  aU  other  traits,  why  did  it  not  vary  the  number  of 
segments  with  which  the  primitive  race  was  endowed  ?  Is 
the  law  of  evolution  limited  or  unlimited  ?  If  it  is  limited  in 
its  effects,  then  there  are  patterns  of  animal  structure  which 
it  has  not  modified,  and  the  presence  of  which  in  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  different  species  must  be  explained  as  a 
form  of  structure  designed  for  some  end  that  was  to  be  com- 
mon to  a  great  multitude  of  different  beings.  If  the  law  of 
evolution  was  unlimited  in  its  power,  then  the  community 
of  pattern  has  had  to  undergo  chances  of  destruction  or 
discontinuance  that  are  immeasurable ;  as  there  can  be  no 
measure  which  will  represent  to  the  mind  the  infinitely 
diversified  and  innumerable  causes  that  have  produced  the 
dissimilarities  which  compel  a  classification  into  the  differ- 
ent species,  upon  the  hypothesis  of  their  descent  from  a 
common  stock.  Grant,  too,  for  the  purpose  of  the  argu- 
ment, that  the -occasional  deviations  from  the  pattern  of 
twenty  segments,  producing  a  few  groups  with  a  smaller 
number  of  articulations,  are  reconcilable  with  the  belief  that 
some  later  ancestral  form  became  endowed  with  the  smaller 
number  which  it  transmitted  to  its  descendants.  How 
came  that  later  ancestral  form  to  be  endowed  with  the 
smaller  number  of  segments  ?  Was  there  a  still  more  re- 
mote ancestral  race,  which  in  some  way  became  possessed 
of  the  smaller  number,  or  did  the  spiders  and  the  mites,  in 
the  countless  generations  of  evolution,  branch  off  from  an- 
cestral races  having  the  full  number  of  twenty  segments  ? 
Upon  either  supposition,  what  an  infinity  of  chances  there 


COMMON  ANCESTRAL  STOCK.  21i 

were,  against  the  natural  selection  of  the  smaller  number, 
and  against  its  preseryation  as  the  unvarying  type  of  ar- 
ticulation found  in  the  spiders  and  the  mites  !  The  sup- 
position that  the  number  of  twenty  segments  was  decided 
on  for  the  three  groups  of  superior  Articulata  for  the  mere 
sake  of  adhering  to  a  pattern  is  doubtless  unphilosophical. 
But  it  is  not  unphilosophical  to  suppose  that  whatever 
amount  of  articulation  is  found  in  each  species  was  given 
to  it  because  in  that  species  it  would  be  useful.  If  in  some 
of  the  most  aberrant  orders  of  these  animals  the  articula- 
tion is  greatly  obscured,  or  not  found  at  all,  the  conclusion 
that  it  was  not  needed,  or  not  needed  in  a  like  degree,  is 
far  more  rational  than  the  theory  which  commits  the  par- 
ticular result  to  an  infinity  of  chances  against  it ;  or  which 
supposes  it  to  have  been  worked  by  a  process  that  might 
have  produced  a  very  different  result,  since  it  can  not  be 
claimed  that  natural  selection  works  by  methods  of  which 
any  definite  result  can  be  predicated  more  than  another. 

Thus  far  I  have  considered  Mr.  Spencer's  argument 
from  the  Articulata  in  the  light  of  the  facts  that  he  adduces. 
Let  us  now  test  it  by  the  absence  of  facts.  In  a  former 
discussion,  I  have  asked  for  facts  which  show,  aside  from 
the  theory,  that  any  one  species  of  animal,  distinctly 
marked  as  a  continuing  type,  is  connected  by  intermediate 
types  or  forms  with  any  pre-existing  race  of  another  char- 
acter. Take  this  class  of  the  articulated  animals,  said  to 
be  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  different  species  having  no 
community  of  form  but  this  of  articulation,  and  now  known 
as  perfect  organisms,  each  after  its  kind.  What  natural- 
ist has  discovered  the  continuity  of  lives  with  lives,  which 
would  furnish  the  steps  of  descent  of  any  one  of  this  spe- 
cies from  an  antecedent  and  a  different  species  ?  It  is 
very  easy  to  construct  a  theory,  and  from  it  to  argue  that 
there  must  have  been  intermediate  links,  which,  if  discov- 
ered, would  show  the  continuity  of  lives  from  lives  which 


212  CEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

the  descent  of  one  organism  from  another  necessarily  im- 
plies. To  a  certain  extent,  within  certain  limits,  the  sub- 
groups and  the  sub-sub-groups  of  the  articulated  class  of 
animals,  which  classification  or  morphology  reveals,  may 
lay  the  foundation  for  a  theoretical  belief  in  an  ancestral 
stock  from  which  the  different  and  now  perfect  forms  of 
these  distinct  animals  may  have  become  developed  by  suc- 
cessive changes  of  structure.  But  the  extent  to  which 
connected  changes  can  be  actually  traced  in  the  animal 
kingdom  is  extremely  limited ;  and  the  important  practi- 
cal question  is  whether  any  one  fact,  or  class  of  facts,  has 
been  discovered  which  will  warrant  the  belief  that  beings  of 
totally  dissimilar  forms  and  habits  of  life  have,  without  any 
design,  been  evolved  by  the  ordinary  process  of  successive 
generation,  through  the  operation  of  causes  that  have  grad- 
ually modified  the  structure  in  all  respects  save  one,  and 
have  at  the  same  time  enabled  or  allowed  that  one  peculiar- 
ity of  structure  to  escape  from  the  influences  which  have 
modified  both  structure  and  modes  of  life  in  every  other  re- 
spect. Why,  for  example,  upon  the  hypothesis  of  descent 
from  a  common  stock,  has  that  stock  deviated  under  the 
influences  of  natural  selection  into  the  lobster,  the  moth, 
and  the  beetle,  and  yet  the  community  of  twenty  segments 
of  articulation  has  entirely  escaped  the  effect  of  those  influ- 
ences ?  No  reason  can  be  assigned  for  the  fact  that  it  has 
escaped  those  influences,  excepting  that  it  was  originally 
designed,  and  was  impressed  upon  the  proto-t3rpical  stock 
with  such  force  as  to  place  it  beyond  the  reach  of  all  such 
causes  of  modification  as  those  which  are  ascribed  to  natural 
or  sexual  selection.  Without  the  latter  supposition,  those 
causes  were  just  as  potent  to  bring  about  a  modification  in 
the  number  of  articulations  as  they  were  to  bring  about 
all  the  astonishing  diversities  of  structure  and  modes  of 
life  that  we  see,  and  therefore  the  most  probable  conclusion 
from  the  fact  of  this  uniformity  of  the  twenty  segments  is. 


DESIGN  MUST  BE  INFERRED.  213 

that  there  was  a  barrier  placed  in  this  whole  class  of  organ- 
isms, which  has  limited  the  modifying  force  of  the  sup- 
posed process  of  eyolution,  for  the  reason  of  some  peculiar 
utility  in  this  plan  of  articulation. 

Perhaps  it  will  be  said  that  the  process  of  evolution  it- 
self tends  to  the  preservation  of  whatever  is  most  useful, 
while  the  modifications  are  going  on  which  develop  new 
organs  and  new  structures  ;  and  that  thus,  in  the  case  be- 
fore us,  the  twenty  segments  have  been  preserved  through- 
out an  enormous  group  by  one  of  the  fundamental  laws  of 
evolution,  so  that,  if  there  is  any  peculiar  utility  in  the 
twenty  segments,  that  utility  has  been  answered  by  the 
very  process  of  gi-adual  descent  of  one  organism  from  an- 
other. But  the  difficulty  with  this  reasoning  is,  that  while 
it  assumes  for  the  modifying  influences  of  natural  and 
sexual  selection  a  range  of  fortuitous  causes  sufficient  to 
change  the  ancestral  type  into  the  acquisition  of  vastly 
diversified  organs,  powers,  and  modes  of  existence,  so  as  to 
constitute  new  animals,  it  yet  assumes  that,  by  some  recog- 
nition of  a  superior  and  paramount  utility  in  the  particular 
number  of  segments,  the  law  of  evolution  has  preserved 
that  number  from  the  influence  of  causes  which  have 
changed  everything  else.  Now,  the  range  of  causes  which 
was  sufficiently  varied,  accidental,  long-continued  and  com- 
plex to  produce  the  diversities  of  structure  in  all  other 
respects,  by  the  infinitely  modifying  influences  which  have 
developed  new  organs  and  new  modes  of  existence,  must 
also  have  been  of  a  sufficiently  varied,  accidental,  long-con- 
tinued, and  complex  character  to  have  broken  this  plan 
of  the  twenty  segments,  unless  we  suppose  that  in  some 
mysterious  and  inexplicable  manner  the  different  genera- 
tions of  these  beings  were  endowed  with  some  kind  of 
sagacity  which  would  enable  them  to  strive  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  this  one  peculiarity,  or  unless  we  suppose  that  Na- 
ture was  ever  on  the  watch  to  guard  them  from  its  destruc- 


214  CEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

tion  or  variation,  on  account  of  its  peculiar  utility.  The 
first  supposition  is  not  in  accordance  with  the  eyolution 
theory ;  for  that  theory  rejects  all  idea  of  conscious  exer- 
tion on  the  part  of  any  of  the  organisms.  The  second  sup- 
position leads  us  at  once  to  the  inquiry,  how  came  it  to  be 
imposed  upon  a  whole  group  of  beings  as  a  law  of  nature, 
that  whatever  utility  of  structure  was  of  paramount  im- 
portance to  the  whole  group  should  be  preserved  against 
the  modifying  influences  that  were  to  produce  species  dif- 
fering absolutely  from  each  other,  through  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  varieties,  in  every  other  feature  of  their  exist- 
ence ?  Can  we  get  along  here  without  the  hypothesis  of 
design  ?  And,  if  there  was  such  design,  how  does  the  fact 
of  this  uniformity  amid  such  diversity  become  an  argument 
against  the  hypothesis  of  a  Creator  ?  Or,  how  does  it  tend 
to  displace  the  hypothesis  of  special  creations,  when  we 
find  that  the  very  process  of  so-called  evolution  has  failed 
to  break  the  uniformity  of  a  pattern  that  is  conceded  not 
to  have  been  the  result  of  chance,  although  that  pattern 
was  exposed  to  just  as  many  and  as  powerful  causes  of 
modification  as  those  which  are  assumed  to  have  brought 
about  the  modifications  in  every  other  feature  of  the  ani- 
mal existence  ?  The  truth  would  seem  to  be,  that  the 
uniformity  amid  so  great  a  diversity  was  either  the  result 
of  a  design  which  placed  it  out  of  the  reach  of  all  the 
modifying  influences,  or  else  it  has,  by  a  most  incalculable 
result,  escaped  from  the  effect  of  those  influences  by  a 
chance  in  which  the  ratio  of  one  to  infinity  can  alone  meas- 
ure the  probability  of  such  an  escape. 

Let  us  now  advert  to  another  of  Mr.  Spencer's  illustra- 
tions of  the  futility  of  the  "supernatural"  and  of  the 
rationality  of  the  ** natural"  interpretation.*    This  illus- 

*  I  use  these  terms  with  quotation-marks,  because  I  do  not  admit  any 
philosophical  antagonism  such  as  they  are  intended  to  imply. 


THE  ILLUSTRATION  OF  THE  SACRUM.  215 

tration  is  deriyed irom  what  are  called  '^homologous"  or- 
gans ;  and  the  particular  instance  selected  is  the  vertebral 
column.*  There  are  creatures,  such  as  snakes,  a  low  order 
of  the  vertebrate  kingdom,  in  which  the  bony  axis  is  divid- 
ed into  segments  of  about  the  same  dimensions  from  end  to 
end,  for  the  obvious  advantage  of  flexibility  throughout  the 
whole  length  of  the  animal.  But  in  most  of  the  higher 
vertebrata,  some  parts  of  this  axis  are  flexible  and  others 
are  inflexible  ;  and  this  is  especially  the  case  in  that  part  of 
the  vertebral  column  called  the  sacrum,  which  is  the  ful- 
crum that  has  to  bear  the  greatest  strain  to  which  the  skele- 
ton is  exposed,  and  which  is  yet  made  not  of  one  long  seg- 
ment or  vertebra,  but  of  several  segments  *' fused  together." 
Mr.  Spencer  says  :  "In  man  there  are  five  of  these  conflu- 
ent sacral  vertebrae ;  and  in  the  ostrich  tribe  they  number 
from  seventeen  to  twenty.  Why  is  this  ?  Why,  if  the 
skeleton  of  each  species  was  separately  contrived,  was  this 
bony  mass  made  by  soldering  together  a  number  of  vertebras 
like  those  forming  the  rest  of  the  column,  instead  of  being 
made  out  of  one  single  piece  ?  And  why,  if  typical  uni- 
formity was  to  be  maintained,  does  the  number  of  sacral 
vertebrae  vary  within  the  same  order  of  birds  ?  Why,  too, 
should  the  development  of  the  sacrum  be  the  roundabout 
process  of  first  forming  its  separate  constituent  vertebrae,  and 
then  destroying  their  separativeness  ?  In  the  embryo  of  a 
mammal  or  bird,  the  substance  of  the  vertebral  column  is,  at 
the  outset,  continuous.  The  segments  that  are  to  become 
vertebrae,  arise  gradually  in  the  midst  of  this  originally  ho- 

*  "  Homology  "  is  defined  by  lexicographers  as  "  the  doctrine  of  similar 
parts."  "  Homologous  organs  "  is  a  term  used  by  scientific  writers  to  de- 
scribe organs  having  a  relation  of  some  proportion  to  each  other.  In  this 
particular  case  of  the  vertebral  column,  the  different  parts  of  the  column 
are  treated  as  if  they  were  different  organs,  and  they  are  said  to  be  homolo- 
gous organs  in  the  same  animal,  because  they  bear  a  cei'tain  relation  or 
ratio  of  proportion  to  each  other. 


216  ,  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

mogeneous  axis.  Equally  in  those  parts  of  tlie  spine  whieli 
are  to  remain  flexible,  and  in  those  which  are  to  grow  rigid, 
these  segments  are  formed,  and  that  part  of  the  spine  which 
is  to  compose  the  sacrum,  having  passed  out  of  its  original 
unity  into  disunity  by  separating  itself  into  segments, 
passes  again  into  unity  by  the  coalescence  of  these  segments. 
To  what  end  is  this  construction  and  reconstruction  ?  If, 
originally,  the  spine  in  yertebrate  animals  consisted  from 
head  to  tail  of  separate  movable  segments,  as  it  does  still  in 
fishes  and  some  reptiles — ^if,  in  the  evolution  of  the  higher 
vertebrata,  certain  of  these  movable  segments  were  ren- 
dered less  movable  with  respect  to  each  other,  by  the  me- 
chanical conditions  to  which  they  were  exposed,  and  at 
length  became  relatively  immovable — it  is  comprehensible 
why  the  sacrum  formed  out  of  them  should  continue  ever 
after  to  show  more  or  less  clearly  its  originally  segmented 
structure.  But  on  any  other  hypothesis  this  segmented 
structure  is  inexplicable." 

We  here  see  the  predominating  force  of  a  theory  which 
refuses  all  possible  rationality  to  any  hypothesis  but  its 
own.  The  confident  tone  with  which  facts  are  arrayed  and 
are  then  pronounced  inexplicable  upon  any  other  hypothe- 
sis than  that  which  the  writer  asserts,  without  one  scintilla 
of  proof  of  their  tendency  to  exclude  every  other  supposi- 
tion, renders  the  refutation  of  such  reasoning  a  wearisome 
task.  But  there  is  here  one  plain  and  sufficient  answer  to 
the  whole  of  the  supposed  difiiculty.  The  evolution  theory, 
in  this  particular  application  of  it,  is  that  originally  there 
were  vertebrate  animals  in  which  the  spine  consisted  of 
separate  movable  segments  from  head  to  tail,  as  it  does  now 
in  fishes  and  reptiles ;  but,  as  the  higher  vertebrata  were 
evolved  out  of  these  lower  forms,  the  movable  segments 
were  rendered  less  movable  with  respect  to  each  other,  and 
at  length  in  the  sacrum  the  segments  became  relatively  im- 
movable, and  yet  the  originally  segmented  structure  was 


DESIGN  OF  THE  SACRUM.  21Y 

• 
retained  in  this  part  of  the  column,  by  force  of  the  pro- 
pinquity of  descent  from  an  antecedent  type  which  had 
the  whole  column  divided  into  movable  segments.  Upon 
no  other  hypothesis,  it  is  asserted,  is  this  result  explicable. 
Mr.  Spencer's  analysis  of  the  sacrum  is  somewhat  de- 
fective. It  is,  as  he  says,  that  part  of  the  vertebrate  column 
which  in  the  higher  class  of  vertebrate  animals  is,  during 
foetal  life,  composed,  like  all  the  rest  of  the  column,  of  dis- 
tinct vertebrae.  These  vertebrae,  like  the  others,  are  flexible 
in  the  foetal  stage,  but  aft^r  birth  they  become  coalesced 
or  united  into  one  piece,  instead  of  remaining  in  separate 
pieces.  Thus  far,  Mr.  Spencer's  description  is,  I  am  in- 
formed by  anatomists,  correct.  But  the  questions  which 
he  propounds  as  if  they  were  unanswerable  upon  the  as- 
sumption that  this  change  is  inexplicable  upon  any  other 
hypothesis  than  that  of  the  evolution  of  the  higher  verte- 
brata  out  of  the  lower  vertebrate  animals,  and  that  the 
sacrum,  with  its  continuous  piece,  has  retained  the  seg- 
mented outward  form  by  force  of  the  descent,  demand 
closer  consideration.  Let  us  trace  the  process  of  formation 
in  the  human  species,  and  then  see  what  is  the  just  con- 
clusion to  be  derived  from  it.  In  the  embryonic  condi- 
tion, the  substance  which  is  to  form  the  vertebral  column 
is  continuous.  As  the  foetus  is  developed,  this  substance 
separates  itself  into  the  segments  which  are  called  vertebras, 
and  these  segments  remain  flexible  and  movable  throughout 
the  column.  After  birth,  the  five  lower  segments  become 
united  in  what  is  substantially  one  piece,  but  of  course  the 
marks  of  the  original  segments  remain.  This  is  what  oc- 
curs in  the  origin  and  growth  of  the  individual.  Now, 
looking  back  to  the  period  when  this  species  of  animal  did 
not  exist,  and  supposing  it  to  have  been  specially  created  in 
the  two  related  forms  of  male  and  female,  endowed  with 
the  same  process  of  procreation  and  gestation  that  has  been 
going  on  ever  since  there  is  any  recorded  or  traditionary 


218  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

knowledge  of  the  race,  why  should  not  this  very  growth  of 
the  sacrum  have  been  designed,  in  order  to  produce,  after 
the  birth  of  the  individual,  that  relative  rigidity  which 
would  in  this  part  of  the  vertebral  column  be  useful  to  an 
animal  destined  to  an  upright  posture  of  the  whole  skeleton 
and  to  the  habits  and  life  of  a  biped  ?  And,  if  we  extend  the 
inquiry  to  other  species,  why  should  we  not  expect  to  find, 
as  in  the  case  of  an  oviparous  vertebrate  like  the  ostrich, 
a  repetition  of  the  same  general  plan  of  forming  the  spinal 
column,  for  the  same  ultimate  purpose,  with  such  a  varia- 
tion in  the  number  of  original  segments  that  are  to  consti- 
tute the  sacrum  as  would  be  most  useful  to  that  bird,  thus 
establishing  for  the  ostrich  a  sacrum  that  in  a  reptile  or  a 
fish  would  not  only  not  be  required,  but  would  be  a  positive 
incumbrance  ?  Upon  the  hypothesis  of  special  creations  of 
the  different  species  of  vertebrate  animals,  every  one  of  Mr. 
Spencer's  questions,  asked  as  if  they  were  unanswerable,  can 
receive  a  satisfactory  solution.  Thus,  he  asks,  "  Why,  if  the 
skeleton  of  each  species  was  separately  contrived,  was  this 
bony  mass  [the  sacrum]  made  by  soldering  together  a  num- 
ber of  vertebrae  like  those  forming  the  rest  of  the  column, 
instead  of  being  made  [aboriginally]  in  one  single  piece  ?  " 
The  answer  is,  that  in  the  establishment  of  the  process  of 
gestation  and  foetal  growth,  if  a  human  artificer  and  de- 
signer could  have  devised  the  process,  he  would  have  se- 
lected the  very  one  that  now  exists,  for  certain  obvious 
reasons.  First,  he  would  have  designedly  made  the  process 
to  consist,  in  the  embryo,  of  a  division  of  the  substance 
which  was  to  form  the  vertebral  column  in  a  continuous 
and  uniform  division  into  segments,  because  the  whole  col- 
umn is  to  have  at  first  the  flexibility  that  may  be  derived 
from  such  a  division.  Secondly,  when  the  time  was  to 
arrive  at  which  the  formation  of  the  sacrum,  with  its 
practical  continuity  of  a  single  piece,  was  to  commence,  he 
would  select  the  number  of  the  lower  vertebrae  that  would 


TYPICAL  UNIFORMITY.  219 

make  a  sacrum  most  useful  to  the  particular  species  of  ani- 
mal, and  would  weld  them  together  so  as  to  give  them  the 
relative  rigidity  and  action  of  a  single  piece.  But  as  the 
whole  formation  is  the  result  of  a  growth  of  the  sacrum 
out  of  a  part  of  the  slowly  forming  column  originally 
divided  into  vertebrae,  the  marks  of  these  separate  vertebrae 
would  remain  distinguishable,  while  they  would  cease  to 
have  the  mechanical  action  of  separate  vertebrae. 

Another  of  Mr.  Spencer's  questions  is,  "  Why,  if  typical 
uniformity  was  to  be  maintained,  does  the  number  of  sacral 
vertebrae  vary  within  the  same  order  of  birds  ?  "  The  an- 
swer is  the  same  as  that  which  assigns  a  reason  for  all  other 
variations  in  the  skeleton  of  animals  of  the  same  order  but 
of  different  varieties,  namely,  the  special  utility  of  the 
variations  in  the  number  of  sacral  vertebrae  that  would  be 
most  useful  in  that  variety.  The  typical  uniformity  main- 
tained is  a  uniformity  in  the  process  of  growth  and  forma- 
tion, down  to  a  point  where  the  variations  are  to  come  in 
which  mark  one  animal  from  another ;  and  I  have  more 
than  once  had  occasion  to  suggest  that  the  typical  uniform- 
ity, and  its  adaptation  to  the  varying  requirements  of  dif- 
ferent beings,  is  the  highest  kind  of  moral  evidence  of  the 
existence,  wisdom,  and  power  of  a  supreme  artificer,  and 
that  it  militates  so  strongly  against  the  doctrine  of  evolution 
that,  without  more  proof  than  can  possibly  be  claimed  for 
that  doctrine,  we  ought  not  to  yield  to  it  our  belief. 

The  theory  that  the  original  condition  of  all  vertebrate 
animals  was  that  of  separate  movable  segments  throughout 
the  spinal  column,  as  it  is  now  in  fishes  and  some  reptiles, 
and  that  in  the  evolution  of  the  higher  vertebrates  out  of 
these  lower  forms,  certain  of  these  movable  segments  were 
rendered  less  movable  with  respect  to  each  other  by  the  me- 
chanical conditions  to  which  the  successive  generations  were 
exposed,  until  at  length  the  sacrum  was  formed,  is  undoubt- 
edly a  theory  that  excludes  all  design  of  an  infinite  artificer, 
11 


220  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

and  aU  intention  whatever.  It  is  a  theory  which  relegates 
the  most  special  contrivances  and  the  most  exact  adaptations 
to  the  fortuitous  operation  of  causes  that  could  not  have 
produced  the  variations  of  structure  and  at  the  same  time 
have  preserved  the  typical  uniformity.  It  is  certainly  a 
theory  which  we  should  not  apply  to  the  works  of  man,  if 
we  were  investigating  products  which  seemed  to  be  the  re- 
sult of  human  ingenuity  and  skill,  but  of  the  origin  of 
which  we  had  no  direct  evidence.  In  such  a  case,  we 
should  not  shut  our  eyes  to  the  proofs  of  intentional  varia- 
tions and  adaptation,  or,  if  we  did,  our  speculations  would 
not  be  likely  to  command  the  assent  of  cultivated  and 
sound  reasoners.  We  may  treat  the  works  of  Nature  by  a 
system  of  logic  that  we  should  not  apply  to  the  works  of 
man,  but  if  we  do,  we  shall  end  in  no  tenable  results.  The 
principal  and  in  fact  the  only  essential  distinction  to  be  ob- 
served between  the  works  of  Nature  and  the  works  of  man 
relates  to  the  degree  of  power,  intelligence,  and  skill  in  the 
actor.  If  we  assume,  as  we  must,  that  in  the  one  case  there 
was  an  actor,  applying  will,  intelligence,  and  power  to  the 
properties  of  matter,  and  molding  it  into  certain  products 
and  uses,  and  that  in  the  other  case  there  was  no  actor, 
but  that  all  products  and  results  are  but  the  ungoverned 
effects  of  what  are  called  natural  laws  in  contradistinction 
to  all  intentional  purposes,  we  must  argue  upon  principles 
that  are  logically  and  diametrically  inconsistent  in  them- 
selves, and  at  variance  with  fundamental  laws  of  reasoning. 
I  will  now  advert  to  an  omission  in  Mr.  Spencer's  analy- 
sis of  the  sacrum,  which  overlooks  one  of  the  strongest 
proofs  of  intentional  design  afforded  by  that  part  of  the 
spinal  column.  We  have  seen  what  was  its  general  purpose 
and  growth,  and  the  process  of  its  formation.  We  have  now 
to  note  its  variations  in  the  male  and  the  female  skeleton. 
In  the  male,  the  sacrum,  thus  formed  before  birth,  afterbirth 
answers  to  and  performs  its  ultimate  function  of  a  compara- 


THE  FEMALE  SACRUM.  221 

tively  rigid  and  inflexible  piece  of  bone,  and  it  is  provided 
with  no  other  special  characteristic.  In  the  female,  on  the 
contrary,  there  is  a  most  remarkable  adaptation  of  this  piece 
to  the  function  of  maternity.  While  all  the  upper  vertebrae 
of  which  this  piece  was  originally  composed  are  welded  to- 
gether after  birth  in  the  female  as  in  the  male,  in  the  female 
the  lowest  segment  of  all  remains  for  a  certain  time  flexible 
relatively  to  the  upper  part  of  the  sacrum,  in  order  to  admit 
of  the  necessary  expansion  of  the  pelvis  during  the  passage 
of  the  infant  from  the  womb  of  the  mother.  In  the  normal 
condition  of  females  of  all  the  vertebrate  orders,  this  flexibil- 
ity of  the  lower  part  of  the  sacrum  continues  while  the  pe- 
riod of  possible  maternity  continues.  If  in  any  individual 
female  it  happens  to  be  wanting  during  the  period  of  pos- 
sible conception,  delivery  can  not  take  place  without  dan- 
ger to  the  mother  or  the  offspring,  or  both.  Hence,  in 
very  bad  cases,  nature  has  to  be  assisted  by  extraordinary 
means.  But  in  the  normal  condition  of  the  female  sacrum, 
this  flexibility,  so  essential  in  the  process  of  safe  delivery, 
is  always  found,  and  its  special  purpose  is  known  to  every 
anatomist,  while  it  has  no  existence  in  the  structure  of  the 
male.  Is  this  distinction  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  same 
kind  of  reasoning  that  undertakes  to  account  for  all  the 
other  great  distinctions  between  the  related  forms  of  male 
and  female,  which  reproduce  their  kind  by  a  common  pro- 
cess of  the  sexual  union,  namely,  that  this  division  of  male 
and  female  came  about  by  a  habit  that  resulted  now  in  the 
production  of  a  male  and  now  in  the  production  of  a  fe- 
male, from  tendencies  that  were  ungoverned  by  any  special 
purpose  ?  Must  we  not  conclude,  however  inscrutable  are 
the  causes  that  determine  the  sex  of  a  particular  infant, 
that  the  sexes  themselves  were  specially  ordained  ?  And  if 
they  were  specially  ordained,  how  are  we  to  account  for  the 
epecial  construction  and  function  of  each  of  them,  without 
the  interposition  of  a  special  design  ?    And  when  we  find 


222  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

a  structure  in  the  female  obviously  designed  for  a  special 
purpose,  and  not  existing  in  the  male,  are  we  to  conclude  that 
some  particular  race  of  females,  in  some  remote  period  of 
antiquity,  among  the  countless  generations  of  the  verte- 
brata,  found  that  this  flexibility  of  the  sacrum  would  be 
highly  convenient  to  them,  and,  having  adopted  it  as  a 
habit,  transmitted  it,  as  a  specially  acquired  peculiarity  of 
structure,  to  their  female  descendants  ?  This  is  all  very  well 
as  a  theoretical  speculation,  but  as  a  speculation  it  is  entire- 
ly defective,  because  it  assigns  the  peculiarity  of  structure 
to  a  cause  that  could  not  have  produced  it.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  hypothesis  of  its  special  creation  assigns  it  to  a 
cause  that  could  have  produced  it,  and  its  existence  is 
among  the  highest  of  the  multitudinous  evidences  of  inten- 
tional design  and  special  formation. 

Wherein  consists  the  irrationality  of  the  hypothesis  that 
a  plan  of  construction  was  intentionally,  and  with  supreme 
skill,  framed  for  very  different  beings,  to  answer  in  each  of 
them  a  common  purpose  ?  The  asserted  irrational  charac- 
ter of  this  hypothesis  consists  in  nothing  but  a  denial  that 
there  was  a  Creator.  It  comes  down  to  this,  if  it  comes  to 
anything  :  because,  if  we  assume  that  there  was  a  Supreme 
Being  who  took  any  care  whatever  of  the  complex  and 
manifold  product  that  we  call  nature — if  we  suppose  that 
he  ordained  anything — we  must  suppose  that  his  power  to 
construct  was  boundless,  and  that  a  repetition  of  his  plans 
wherever  they  would  be  useful,  to  answer  the  beneficent 
and  diversified  ends  of  infinite  skill  and  benevolence,  is 
just  as  much  in  accordance  with  the  whole  hypothesis  of 
his  attributes  as  it  is  to  suppose  that  he  caused  anything 
whatever  to  exist.  If  we  deny  his  existence,  if  we  can  not 
satisfy  ourselves  of  it  at  all,  if  we  suppose  that  nothing  was 
ordained,  nothing  was  created,  but  that  all  these  diversi- 
fied forms  of  animal  organisms  grew  out  of  a  protoplasmic 
substance,  and  that  there  was  never  any  absolute  commence- 


HOW  SPECIAL  CREATION  IS  TO  BE  VIEWED.    223 

ment  of  organic  life  on  the  globe,  or  any  absolute  com- 
mencement of  anything  whatever,  it  is  of  course  idle  to 
speculate  upon  the  adoption  or  preservation  of  patterns,  as 
it  is  equally  idle  to  pursue  the  theory  of  evolution  through 
stages  which  at  last  end  nowhere  whatever.* 

It  may  be  well  to  cite  Mr.  Spencer's  final  summary  of 
the  general  truths  which  he  claims  to  be  revealed  by  mor- 
phology, because  it  will  enable  the  reader  to  see  just  where 
the  logical  inconsequence  of  his  position  occurs  :  '*  The 
general  truths  of  morphology  thus  coincide  in  their  im- 
plications. Unity  of  t\'pe,  maintained  under  extreme  dis- 
similarities of  form  and  mode  of  life,  is  explicable  as  re- 
sulting from  descent  with  modi6cation  ;  but  is  otherwise 
inexplicable.  The  likenesses  disguised  by  unlikenesses, 
which  the  comparative  anatomist  discovers  between  vari- 
ous organs  in  the  same  organisms,  are  worse  than  mean- 
ingless if  it  be  supposed  that  organisms  were  severally 
formed  as  we  now  see  them  ;  but  they  fit  in  quite  harmoni- 
ously with  the  belief  that  each  kind  of  organism  is  a  product 
of  accumulated  modifications  upon  modifications.  And  the 
presence,  in  all  kinds  of  animals  and  plants,  of  functionally 
useless  parts  corresponding  to  parts  that  are  functionally 
useful  in  allied  animals  and  plants,  while  it  is  totally  incon- 
gruous with  the  belief  in  a  construction  of  each  organism  by 
miraculous  interposition,  is  just  what  we  are  led  to  expect 
by  the  belief  that  organisms  have  arisen  by  progression."  f 

Without  expending  much  criticism  upon  the  phrase 
"miraculous  interposition,"  as  a  description  of  what  takes 
place  in  special  creation,  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  the  act 
of  special  creation  of  a  distinct  organism  is  to  be  first  viewed 
by  itself,  as  if  it  stood  alone  in  nature,  and  that  it  is  like 
any  other  act  of  causing  a  new  thing  to  exist  which  did  not 

*  See  the  discussion  of  how  evolution  works,  post, 
f  "Biology,"  i,  p.  387. 


224  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

exist  before.  To  this  idea  should  be  added  the  fact  that 
in  the  creation  of  an  animal  organism  there  is  involved  the 
direct  formation  of  a  peculiar  type  of  animal,  with  a  capaci- 
ty of  producing  other  individuals  of  the  same  type  through 
a  process  of  generation.  When,  after  having  attained  this 
conception  of  the  act  of  special  creation,  and  contemplated 
a  single  instance  of  the  supposed  exercise  of  such  a  power, 
we  extend  our  inquiries,  we  find  many  other  instances  of 
the  exercise  of  the  same  power  ;  and  then  we  observe  a  cer- 
tain unity  of  type  in  some  peculiarity  of  structure,  main- 
tained under  extreme  dissimilarities  of  form  and  mode  of 
life.  How,  then,  is  this  one  similarity  of  pattern,  amid 
such  multiformity  in  other  respects,  "  worse  than  meaning- 
less," if  we  suppose  that  **  organisms  were  severally  framed 
as  we  now  see  them"  ?  The  very  hypothesis  that  they 
were  so  severally  framed  carries  in  itself  a  meaning  which 
can  not  be  thus  summarily  ignored  ;  because  that  hypoth- 
esis implies  a  power  in  the  Creator  to  do  just  what  we  see. 
You  may  deny  the  power ;  but  if  you  admit  the  existence 
of  the  infinite  creating  power,  you  are  remitted  to  the  in- 
quiry into  its  probable  methods  ;  and  you  can  no  more  say 
that  the  special  creation  of  distinct  organisms,  with  a  cer- 
tain unity  amid  a  great  multiformity,  leaves  the  whole 
phenomena  without  a  meaning,  than  you  can  say  that  any 
method  which  you  can  suggest  is  necessarily  the  only  meth- 
od which  will  afford  a  rational  meaning  in  what  we  see. 
You  must  go  the  length  of  denying  the  entire  postulate  of 
a  Creator,  before  you  can  be  in  a  situation  to  deny  the 
meaning  that  is  involved  in  the  idea  of  creation  ;  for  that 
idea  implies  an  absolute  power  to  apply  a  uniform  pattern 
of  structure  to. a  whole  class  of  organisms  varied  in  all  oth- 
er respects.  (^The  theory  that  each  kind  of  organism  is  a 
product  of  accumulated  modifications  upon  modifications, 
without  any  special  interposition  to  produce  the  modified 
and  distinct  forms,  must  be  maintained  on  one  of  two  sup- 


POSSIBILITY  OF  SPECIAL  CREATIO^f.  225 

positions  :  either  that  at  some  period  there  was  an  absolute 
commencement  of  organic  life  in  some  form,  upon  this 
globe,  and  that  then  all  the  other  forms  which  we  see  were 
left  to  be  evolved  out  of  that  one  by  the  ungoverned  ac- 
cumulation of  modifications  upon  modifications,  or  else 
that  there  was  never  any  absolute  commencement  of  organic 
life  at  any  time,  but  that  matter,  by  some  peculiar  property 
derived  from  some  source  that  is  not  suggested,  took  on 
combinations  which  resulted  in  some  crude  form  of  ani- 
mated organism,  and  that  then  the  accumulations  of  modi- 
fications upon  modifications  followed  from  some  process 
of  generation  by  which  the  successive  organisms  became 
multiplied  and  varied.  Of  the  former  supposition,  I  un- 
derstand Mr.  Darwin  to  have  been  a  representative  natu- 
ralist. Of  the  latter,  I  understand  Mr.  Spencer  to  be  an 
advocate.  Upon  what  may  be  called  the  Darwinian  doc- 
trine, the  idea  of  a  Creator,  causing  to  exist  at  some  time 
some  crude  form  of  animal  life,  is  admitted.  Upon  the 
Spencerian  doctrine,  which  will  be  in  this  respect  more 
closely  examined  hereafter,  I  do  not  see  that  the  idea  of  a 
creating  power  comes  in  anywhere,  either  at  the  commence- 
ment of  a  series  of  organisms  or  at  any  point  in  that  series. 
But,  upon  the  logical  proposition  asserted  in  the  passage  last 
above  quoted,  it  is  obvious  that,  unless  the  idea  of  a  Creator 
is  absolutely  denied,  the  presence  of  a  unity  of  type  amid  any 
amount  of  dissimilarities  of  form  and  mode  of  life  can  not 
be  pronounced  to  be  without  meaning,  because  the  idea  of 
a  Creator  implies  a  power  to  make  that  very  unity  amid  the 
uniformity,  which  is  asserted  to  be  inexplicable  without  re- 
sorting to  the  theory  that  it  was  not  made  at  all,  but  that 
it  grew  out  of  events  over  which  no  superintending  or  gov- 
erning power  was  exercised.  Upon  this  kind  of  dogmatic 
assertion  there  can  be  no  common  ground  of  reasoning. 

The  assumed  incongruity  between  the  facts  and  the 
hypothesis  of  a  special  creation  of  each  organism  is  an  in- 


226  CREATIOiT  OR  EVOLUTION? 

congruity  that  arises  out  of  the  assumption  that  such  spe- 
cial creation  was  an  impossibility.  If  once  the  idea  of  an 
infinite  creating  faculty  is  assumed  as  the  basis  of  the  rea- 
soning, all  seeming  incongruity  vanishes,  and  the  probable 
method  of  that  creating  power  must  be  determined  by  the 
preponderence  of  evidence.  If  the  power  is  denied,  we 
must  grope  our  way  through  systems  which  impute  every- 
thing to  the  properties  of  substance,  without  any  sugges- 
tion of  a  source  from  which  those  properties  were  derived, 
and  without  anything  to  guide  them  but  the  tendencies 
implanted  in  them,  we  know  not  how  or  when,  and  of  the 
origin  of  which  we  have  not  even  a  suggestion.  Some  of 
the  speculations  of  Greek  philosophers  adverted  to  in  a 
previous  chapter  may  serve  to  show  us  what  comes  of  the 
omission  to  conceive  of  power  as  abstracted  from  substance 
or  its  properties.  The  philosophy  which  first  attained  to 
this  conception  led  the  way  to  that  conception  of  an  Infinite 
Being,  without  whose  existence  and  attributes  all  specula- 
tion upon  the  phenomena  of  nature  leads  to  nothing.  A 
belief  in  his  existence  and  attributes  must  undoubtedly  be 
attained  by  an  examination  of  his  works,  if  we  set  aside  the 
teachings  of  revealed  religion.  But  if  we  can  not  attain  it, 
we  have  no  better  means  for  believing  in  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  than  we  have  for  believing  in  any  other  method  by 
wMch  the  phenomena  of  nature  have  become  what  they  are. 
(  The  question  here  is,  not  whether  descent  of  organ- 
lams  from  organisms,  with  modifications  upon  modifications, 
is  a  supposable  theory,  but  whether  it  is  so  satisfactorily 
shown  that  it  can  be  said  to  exclude  the  hypothesis  of  a 
special  creation  of  each  organism.  There  may  be  parts  of 
structure  in  one  animal  which  seem  to  have  no  functional 
use,  although  we  should  be  cautious  in  making  the  assump- 
tion that  they  are  of  no  use  because  we  have  not  yet  dis- 
covered that  use.  But  let  it  be  assumed  that  these  appar- 
ently useless  parts  in  one  animal  correspond  to  parts  which 


LIMITS  OF  MODIFICATION.  227 

in  another  animal  are  functionally  useful.  If  there  was 
established  for  these  two  separately  created  animals  a  like 
system  of  procreation  and  gestation,  that  system,  affected 
at  the  same  time  by  a  law  of  growth  imposed  by  the  special 
t3rpe  of  the  species,  might  in  one  species  lead  to  the  pres- 
ence of  parts  of  which  we  can  not  recognize  the  use,  and 
might  in  other  species  lead  to  the  presence  of  parts  of 
which  we  can  see  the  use.  It  does  not  help  to  a  better  ex- 
planation to  say  that  there  has  been  an  accumulation  of 
modifications  upon  modifications  in  the  course  of  an  un- 
known descent  of  one  organism  from  another.  Why  did 
these  modifications  stop  short  of  the  production  of  a  species 
or  of  several  species  in  which  no  resemblance  of  parts 
more  or  less  functionally  useful  could  be  found  ?  The 
supposition  is  that  the  modifications  have  been  going  on 
through  millions  of  years.  Time  enough,  therefore,  has 
elapsed  for  the  destruction  of  all  uniformity  of  structure  ; 
and  the  causes  of  modification  are  as  immeasurable  as  the 
period  through  which  they  are  supposed  to  have  been 
operating.  The  imaginary  ancestral  stock,  wherever  it  is 
placed  in  the  line  of  remote  descent,  had,  in  its  first  dis- 
tinctive existence,  a  peculiar  structure,  which  it  bequeaths 
to  its  offspring.  In  the  countless  generations  of  its  de- 
scendants, modifications  of  that  structure  take  place,  until 
a  new  animal  is  evolved.  What  preserved  any  unity  of 
type  from  the  modifying  influences  ?  It  was  not  choice 
on  the  part  of  the  several  descending  species ;  not  a  con- 
scious exertion  to  preserye  something  ;  it  was  nothing  but 
the  propinquity  of  descent,  which  by  the  law  of  heredity 
transmitted  certain  resemblances.  But  why  was  that  law 
so  potent  that  it  could  preserve  a  certain  unity  of  type,  and 
at  the  same  time  so  powerless  as  not  to  prevent  the  modifi- 
cations which  the  successive  organisms  have  undergone  in 
all  other  respects  ?  Or,  to  reverse  the  terms  of  the  ques- 
tion,  why  were   the  causes  of  modification  sufficiently 


228  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

powerful  to  produce  distinct  species,  and  yet  not  powerful 
enough  to  eliminate  the  resemblances  which  we  find  obtain- 
ing throughout  the  whole  group  of  animals  to  which  these 
several  species  belong  ?  It  would  seem  that  here  we  are  not 
to  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that,  in  the  animal  kingdom,  pro- 
creation never  takes  place  between  a  male  and  a  female  of 
distinct  species,  and  that  we  have  no  reason  to  believe  that 
it  ever  did  take  place.  Now,  although  the  evolution  hy- 
pothesis supposes  that,  starting  from  an  ancestral  stock, 
the  modifications  of  structure  have  been  produced  in  off- 
spring descended  from  parents  of  that  same  stock,  which 
have  transmitted  acquired  peculiarities  to  their  immediate 
progeny,  and  so  on  indefinitely,  yet  there  must  have  been 
a  time  when  the  diverging  species  became  distinct  and  pe- 
culiar organisms,  and  when  it  became  impossible  for  any 
crossing  of  these  organisms  to  take  place.  All  the  supposed 
modifications,  therefore,  have  taken  place  within  the  limits 
of  an  actual  descent  of  one  kind  of  animal  from  another, 
each  successive  pair  belonging  to  the  species  from  which 
they  were  individually  generated.  In  this  descent  of  lives 
from  lives,  there  came  about  changes  which  in  progress  of 
time  led  to  two  animals  as  wide  asunder  as  the  man  and 
the  ostrich,  or  as  the  man  and  the  horse,  and  yet  the  causes 
which  were  powerful  enough  to  produce  these  widely  di- 
verging species  were  not  powerful  enough  to  break  up  all 
unity  of  plan  in  some  one  or  more  respects.  If  natural- 
ists of  the  evolution  school  would  explain  how  there  has 
come  to  be,  for  example,  in  the  skeleton  of  the  vertebrata, 
a  bony  structure  called  the  spine,  in  which  a  certain  resem- 
blance and  a  certain  function  obtain  throughout  the  whole 
class,  and  yet  one  species  creeps  upon  its  belly,  another 
walks  on  four  legs,  and  another  on  two,  and  one  flies  in  the 
air  and  another  never  can  do  so,  and  how  this  could  be 
without  any  design  or  special  interposition  of  a  creating 
power,  but  that  the  whole  of  this  uniformity  amid  such 


EMBRYOLOGY.  229 

diversity  has  arisen  from  acquired  habits  among  the  differ- 
ent descendants  from  an  aboriginal  stock  that  had  no  such 
habits  in  either  mode  of  locomotion,  and  no  organs  for  such 
modes  of  life,  they  would  at  least  be  able  to  commend  their 
theory  to  a  better  appreciation  of  its  claims  than  is  now 
possible  to  those  who  want  ''grounds  more  relative  "  than 
a  naked  hypothesis. 

3.  The  argument  from  embryology  requires  for  its  ap- 
preciation a  careful  statement  of  its  abstract  proposition, 
and  a  statement  of  it  in  a  concrete  form.  As  an  abstract 
proposition,  embryology,  or  the  comparison  of  the  develop- 
ment of  different  organisms  under  their  embryonic  stages, 
shows  that  in  the  earliest  stage  of  any  organism  it  has 
the  greatest  number  of  characters  in  common  with  all 
other  organisms  in  their  earliest  stage  ;  that  at  a  later 
stage  its  structure  is  like  the  structures  displayed  at  corre- 
sponding phases  by  a  less  extensive  number  of  organisms  ; 
that  at  each  subsequent  stage  the  developing  embryo  be- 
comes more  and  more  distinguished  from  the  groups  of  em- 
bryos that  it  previously  resembled  ;  and  that  this  divergence 
goes  on,  until  we  reaoh  the  species  of  which  the  embryo 
is  a  member,  in  which  the  class  of  similar  forms  is  finally 
narrowed  to  that  species. 

It  seems  that  Von  Baer  formulated  this  generalization 
of  embryologic  development  into  an  "embryologic  law," 
which,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer,  becomes  a  support  to  the 
hypothesis  of  evolution  in  this  way  :  Species  that  had  a 
common  ancestry  will  exhibit  a  parallelism  in  the  embry- 
onic development  of  their  individual  members.  As  the 
embryos  of  the  ancestral  stock  were  developed  in  their 
growth,  so  the  embryos  of  the  descended  species  would  be 
developed  at  corresponding  phases  in  a  similar  way.  As 
one  species  diverged  from  its  ancestral  stock,  there  would 
come  about  modifications  in  the  development  of  its  em- 
bryos, and  thus  a  later  ancestral  stock  would  be  formed, 


230  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

which  would  in  turn  transmit  to  its  descendants  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  embryo  less  and  less  resemblances,  and 
so  on,  until  finally  the  individual  animal,  at  birth,  would 
structurally  resemble  only  the  individual  infants  of  its  own 
race. 

Here,  then,  is  another  remarkable  instance  of  the  force 
of  an  adopted  theory.  First,  we  have  a  comparison  of  the 
embryonic  development  of  different  animals  from  their 
seminal  germs  which  displays  certain  phenomena  of  resem- 
blances and  departures.  Next,  we  have  the  assumption  of 
an  ancestral  stock,  the  common  origin  of  all  the  organisms 
in  the  development  of  whose  embryos  among  its  descend- 
ants an  embryologic  law  was  to  work,  starting  from  the 
visible  resemblance  of  all  the  germs,  then  exhibiting  struct- 
ural changes  into  later  ancestral  stocks,  and  so  on,  until 
the  resemblances  are  reduced  to  those  which  obtain  only 
among  individuals  of  the  same  species.  So  that,  without 
the  hypothesis,  the  assumption  of  an  ancestral  stock  of  all 
the  organisms,  formed  somehow  in  the  course  of  descent 
from  a  germ  that  gave  rise  to  an  animal  of  some  kind,  we 
have  nothing  to  which  to  apply  the  embryologic  law.  We 
are  to  infer  the  embryologic  law  from  the  parallelism  of 
embryonic  development  which  prevails  in  the  whole  series 
of  animal  generation,  or  from  its  divergences,  or  from  both, 
and  then  we  draw  from  this  law  the  inference  that  the 
whole  series  of  animals  came  from  some  common  stock. 
The  difficulty  with  this  whole  theory  is,  as  I  have  more 
than  once  suggested,  that  we  have  no  means,  aside  from  the 
theory  itself,  of  connecting  lives  with  lives,  in  the  genera- 
tion of  one  distinct  species  out  of  another.  Without  some 
proof  of  the  fact  that  the  human  foetus  was  a  diverging 
growth  out  of  some  ancestral  stock  that  was  the  same  as 
that  from  which  the  foetus  of  another  animal  was  a  differ- 
ent diverging  growth,  the  embryologic  law  is  no  help  to  us 
whatever.     If  this  kinship  of  the  human  foetus  with  the 


TRUE  SCOPE  OF  SPECIAL  CREATION.  231 

foetus  of  some  other  animal  can  not  be  found,  by  tracing 
the  intermediate  links  which  carry  them  respectively  back 
to  their  common  ancestor,  between  what  animals  in  re- 
spect to  their  embryonic  development  can  such  kinship  be 
found,  excepting  upon  the  theoretical  assumption  of  a  com- 
mon origin  of  the  whole  vertebral  class  ?  If  there  was  such 
a  common  ancestral  stock,  where  is  it  to  be  placed,  what 
was  its  character,  when  did  the  law  of  embryologic  develop- 
ment begin  to  operate  upon  its  descendants  ?  Until  some 
facts  can  be  adduced  which  will  have  a  satisfactory  tend- 
ency to  show  the  kinship  of  one  animal  with  another  by 
reason  of  ancestral  descent  from  a  common  ancestral  stock 
that  was  unlike  either  of  them,  the  phenomena  of  embryo- 
logic  development  have  no  tendency  to  displace  the  hy- 
pothesis of  special  creations  ;  for,  on  the  latter  hypothesis, 
the  phenomena  of  resemblances  and  differences  in  the 
growth  from  the  germ  into  the  foetus  and  from  the  foetus 
into  the  newly  born  infant,  evinced  by  any  range  of  com- 
parison of  the  different  species,  would  be  the  same.  If  man 
was  a  special  creation,  and  one  of  the  higher  quadrumana 
was  also  a  distinct  and  separate  creation,  the  establishment 
for  each  of  a  like  process  of  procreation  and  gestation 
would  produce  all  the  resemblances  of  foetal  growth  that 
obtain  between  them,  and  the  ordained  differences  of  their 
animal  destinies  would  explain  all  the  divergences.  Let  us 
see  if  this  is  not  a  rational  conclusion. 

It  is  exceedingly  difiScult  for  the  common  reader  of  such 
a  work  as  that  of  Mr.  Spencer,  on  which  I  am  now  com- 
menting, to  avoid  the  influence  of  the  perpetual  assertion 
that  facts  are  explicable  upon  one  hypothesis  alone.  At 
each  step  in  the  argument,  the  array  of  facts  terminates 
with  the  assertion  that,  upon  the  hypothesis  of  design,  the 
facts  are  inexplicable  ;  and  yet  we  are  furnished  with  no 
reasoning  that  has  a  tendency  to  show  that  the  facts  neces- 
sarily exclude  the  hypothesis  of  design,  or,  in  other  words. 


232  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

that  the  facts  are  inconsistent  with  that  hypothesis.  It  is 
essential  to  understand  what  is  the  true  scope  of  the  hy- 
pothesis of  special  creation  ;  for,  without  a  definite  idea  of 
what  that  term  implies,  we  have  no  proper  means  of  compar- 
ing the  facts  of  animal  resemblances  or  differences  with  the 
rationality  of  the  hypothesis  that  they  resulted  from  an  in- 
tentional design.  Kecollecting,  then,  that  we  are  now  pur- 
suing the  resemblances  and  divergences  that  are  found  in  a 
comparison  of  the  embryologic  development  of  different 
species  of  animals,  let  us  endeavor  to  understand  the  mean- 
ing of  what  I  have  suggested  at  the  close  of  the  last  pre- 
ceding paragraph  ;  namely,  the  establishment  for  a  large 
class  of  animals  of  a  like  general  system  of  procreation  and 
gestation,  and  the  ordination  of  different  destinies  for  the  dif- 
ferent species  of  animals  belonging  to  that  class.  I  have 
said  that  the  two  branches  of  this  hypothesis  would  account 
for  the  resemblances  in  the  embryological  growth  of  differ- 
ent animals,  and  would  explain  the  divergences  which  ob- 
tain among  their  embryological  developments.  The  first 
inquiry  is,  whether  this  hypothesis  presents  a  true  philosophic 
idea  of  special  creation.  The  next  inquiry  is,  whether  it 
affords  a  satisfactory  explanation  of  the  phenomena  of  com- 
parative embryologic  development. 

We  must  never  lose  sight  of  the  one  grand  postulate  of 
an  infinite  Creator.  This  postulate  must  be  conceded  to 
the  believers  in  special  creations,  because  any  idea  of  crea- 
tion implies  a  creating  power.  If  we  conceive  of  creation 
without  a  Creator,  we  must  stop  all  argument.  Now,  the 
hypothesis  of  creation,  as  I  have  more  than  once  said,  im- 
plies a  being  of  boundless  faculties.  There  can  be  abso- 
lutely no  limitation  to  the  power  of  such  a  being,  either  in 
respect  to  the  methods  by  which  he  will  accomplish  his 
objects,  or  to  the  number  and  variety  of  these  objects,  or  to 
the  purposes  for  which  they  are  to  exist.  If  we  narrow  our 
conception  of  creating  power  to  anything  less  than  an  infi- 


PARALLEL  EMBRYONIC  DEVELOPMENT.        233 

nite  faculty  ;  if  we  suppose  it  to  be  restricted  in  any  direc- 
tion ;  if  we  argue  about  it  as  if  there  were  things  that  it 
can  not  do,  we  shall  be  without  the  means  of  reasoning 
soundly  upon  anything  that  it  is  supposed  to  haye  done. 
It  is  quite  otherwise  when  we  are  reasoning  about  the  oper- 
ation and  effect  of  secondary  causes.  There  is  no  second- 
ary cause — no  imaginable  operation  of  a  fixed  quality  of 
substance — no  action  of  any  of  the  properties  of  substance — 
that  is  not  limited.  The  scope  of  its  action  may  be  very 
wide  ;  within  its  sphere  it  may  be  enormously  potent ;  but 
in  its  very  nature  it  is  bounded.*  It  is  not  so  with  the  First 
Cause  of  all  things  ;  not  so  with  the  Infinite  Power  which, 
upon  the  hypothesis  of  a  First  Cause,  has  established  all 
the  physical  laws  of  the  universe  and  all  the  properties  of 
matter.  So  that,  when  we  reason  about  the  methods  of  that 
infinite  creating  power,  if  we  find  a  general  system  estab- 
lished, or  a  pattern  repeated  through  a  very  large  class  of 
organisms,  the  proper  inference  is,  not  that  the  power  was 
limited,  but  that  it  has  been  exercised  to  the  whole  extent 
of  what  was  useful,  and  in  that  direction  has  been  exercised 
no  further  ;  and  if  we  find  variations  or  additional  struct- 
ures incorporated  with  the  repetition  of  a  general  pattern, 
the  proper  inference  is  that  the  unlimited  creating  power 
has  put  forth  all  the  additional  exertion  and  skill  needful 
for  the  formation  of  new  beings. 

What,  then,  does  the  establishment  of  a  like  system  of 
procreation  and  gestation  imply,  upon  the  supposition  of 
the  distinct  creation  of  species  ?  It  implies  a  certain  par- 
allel embryonic  development,  from  the  germ  to  the  fcetus 

*  The  Greek  philosophers,  as  we  have  seen,  before  Plato  and  Aristotle, 
found  that  their  systems  of  causes,  which  did  not  involve  the  idea  of  power 
as  abstracted  from  substance,  would  not  account  for  the  phenomena  of  na- 
ture. With  all  their  subtilty  and  ingenuity,  they  did  not  reach  the  truth 
that  secondary  causes  are  necessarily  limited  in  their  action,  and  that  there 
must  be  an  unlimited  cause. 


234  OKEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

and  from  the  foetus  to  the  new-born  infant,  throughout 
a  large  group  of  different  animals  ;  and  this  parallelism 
would  in  certain  stages  of  the  embryonic  growth  display 
identity  or  close  similarity  of  form  and  structure.  But  as 
in  each  species  of  animal  the  distinct  creation  would  ne- 
cessarily imply  a  distinct  destiny,  the  parallelism  of  em- 
bryonic form  and  structure  would  cease  at  the  point  of  de- 
velopment at  which  the  characteristic  structure  of  the  spe- 
cies would  begin  to  unfold  itself.  The  general  system  of 
procreation  and  gestation  common  to  a  whole  class  of  dif- 
ferent animals,  and  the  ordained  diversity  of  species,  would 
present  the  same  phenomena  of  resemblances  and  differ- 
ences in  the  embryonic  development  that  are  supposed  to 
be  explicable  only  by  the  hypothesis  of  a  descent  of  all  the 
species  from  a  common  ancestral  stock  through  the  process 
of  evolution. 

Notwithstanding  the  mystery  and  obscurity  in  which 
the  process  of  animal  procreation  is  involved — a  mystery 
and  obscurity  which  will  perhaps  never  be  fully  solved — we 
can  see  enough  to  warrant  some  definite  conclusions.  One 
of  these  conclusions  is  that,  in  the  formation  of  the  germ 
which  becomes  developed  into  the  foetus,  the  male  and  fe- 
male parent  each  contributes  some  cellular  substance  to  the 
compound  which  constitutes  that  germ.  We  may  safely 
infer  this,  because  the  individual  animal  becomes  a  union 
of  characteristics  belonging  to  both  the  parents,  although 
the  traits  that  are  peculiar  to  one  of  the  parents  may  be 
more  or  less  marked  in  their  different  offspring,  so  that 
in  one  of  the  descendants  the  parental  and  in  another  the 
maternal  traits  will  predominate.  But  in  every  descendant 
from  the  same  pair  there  is  more  or  less  of  the  peculiari- 
ties of  each  parent  plainly  discernible.  The  inference, 
therefore,  may  be  safely  drawn  that  the  male  and  the 
female  parent  each  contributes  to  the  formation  of  the 
ante-foetal  germ  some  cellular  substance,  in  which  resides 


LAWS  OF  DEVELOPMENT.  235 

the  typical  characteristic  of  animal  organism  which  each 
parent  possesses.  The  compound  germ  that  is  thus  formed 
is  endowed  with  the  mysterious  principle  of  animal  life 
which  admits  of  growth  and  development ;  and  whether 
after  its  formation  the  female  parent  bestows  most  or  be- 
stows least  upon  the  product,  that  product  consists  of  a 
union  of  cellular  substances  contributed  by  both  the  male 
and  the  female  parent  in  the  sexual  act  of  procreation. 
This  compound  resultant  germ,  in  the  earliest  stage  of  its 
formation,  like  the  separate  cells  of  which  it  is  a  union, 
exhibits  no  visible  difference  when  we  compare  the  ante- 
foetal  germ  of  one  animal  with  that  of  a  different  animal. 
Perhaps  we  shall  never  be  able  to  detect  either  chemical  or 
mechanical  differences  in  the  cellular  substances  or  in  the 
earliest  stage  of  the  compound  product  which  has  resulted 
from  their  union.  But  in  that  compound  product  there 
resides  a  contributory  cellular  substance  derived  from  each 
of  the  parents  ;  and  it  is  a  just  inference  from  this  fact,  and 
from  what  we  learn  when  we  trace  the  further  develop- 
ment, that  there  is  a  peculiar  and  typical  structure  im- 
pressed upon  and  inwrapped  in  this  compound  germ,  which 
is  to  grow  into  a  foetal  development  by  a  law  of  its  own. 
There  will  at  the  same  time  be  a  particular  law  of  develop- 
ment for  each  distinct  species  of  animal,  and  a  general  law 
of  development  for  a  great  variety  of  species  among  whom 
there  obtains  a  common  process  of  the  sexual  union  and  of 
the  contribution  of  male  and  female  cellular  substance. 
When  the  foetus  becomes  formed,  there  will  still  be  marked 
resemblances  in  the  different  species,  before  the  stage  is 
reached  at  which  the  characteristic  structure  of  each  spe- 
cies is  to  begin  to  unfold  itself.  But  at  some  time  the  fun- 
damental difference  of  structure  originally  lodged  in  the 
cellular  substances  of  which  the  compound  ante-foetal  germ 
was  composed,  and  impressed  upon  that  germ  as  the  t3rpe 
which  was  gradually  to  unfold  itself  into  a  distinct  being, 


236  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

will  begin  to  exert  its  force.  The  resemblances  of  structure 
will  become  less  and  less,  as  the  foetus  of  the  different  ani- 
mals approaches  to  the  time  of  birth.  Organs,  or  appear- 
ances of  organs,  which  at  one  stage  of  the  comparison  have 
seemed  to  indicate  descent  from  a  common  ancestral  stock, 
but  which  may.  have  been  only  the  result  of  a  common  pro- 
cess of  foetal  development,  will  be  found  to  be  varied  by 
force  of  the  original  diversity  of  structure  and  destiny  that 
was  made  to  reside  in  the  seminal  substance  of  each  dis- 
tinct species  of  animal ;  and,  at  length,  this  original  and 
intentional  peculiarity  of  structure  and  being  would  be- 
come perfected  at  or  before  the  period  when  birth  is  to 
take  place,  leaving  only  those  resemblances  which  must 
obtain  in  all  organisms  constructed  in  certain  respects  upon 
a  uniform  plan,  and  brought  into  being  by  a  common  pro- 
cess of  procreation  and  gestation. 

Let  us  now  see  whether  this  reasoning  involves  any 
such  unphilosophical  or  unscientific  belief  as  is  supposed. 
Passing  by  the  often-repeated  assertion  that  the  facts  of 
comparative  embryologic  development  are  reconcilable  only 
with  the  belief  in  evolution,  let  us  advert  to  some  of  those 
facts.  "The  substitutions,"  says  Mr.  Spencer,  "of  organs 
and  the  suppression  of  organs,  are  among  those  secondary 
embryological  phenomena  which  harmonize  with  the  belief 
in  evolution,  but  can  not  be  reconciled  with  any  other  be- 
lief. There  are  cases  where,  during  its  earlier  stages  of 
development,  an  embryo  possesses  organs  that  afterward 
dwindle  away,  as  there  arise  other  organs  to  discharge  the 
same  functions.  And  there  are  cases  where  organs  make 
their  appearance,  grow  to  certain  points,  have  no  functions 
to  discharge,  and  disappear  by  absorption."  The  concrete 
illustration  of  this  substitution  and  suppression  of  organs  is 
thus  given  by  Mr.  Spencer  : 

"We  have  a  remarkable  instance  of  this  substitution  in 
the  successive  temporaiy  appliances  for  aSrating  the  blood 


EMBRYONIC  CHANGES.  237 

wliicli  the  mammalian  embryo  exhibits.  During  the  first 
phase  of  its  development,  the  mammalian  embryo  circulates 
its  blood  through  a  system  of  vessels  distributed  over  what  is 
called  the  area  vasculosa,  a  system  of  vessels  homologous  with 
one  which,  among  fishes,  serves  for  aerating  the  blood  until 
the  permanent  respiratory  organs  come  into  play.  After  a 
time,  there  buds  out  from  the  mammalian  embryo  a  vascu- 
lar membrane  called  the  allantois,  homologous  with  one 
which,  in  birds  and  reptiles,  replaces  the  first  as  a  breathing 
apparatus.  But  while,  in  the  higher  oviparous  vertebrates, 
the  allantois  serves  the  purpose  of  a  lung  during  the  rest 
of  embryonic  life,  it  does  not  do  so  in  the  mammalian  em- 
bryo. In  implacental  mammals  it  aborts,  having  no  func- 
tion to  discharge  ;  and  in  the  higher  mammals  it  becomes 
''placentiferous,  and  serves  as  the  means  of  intercommuni- 
cation between  the  parent  and  the  offspring  " — becomes  an 
organ  of  nutrition  more  than  of  respiration.  Now,  since 
the  first  system  of  external  blood-vessels,  not  being  in  con- 
tact with  a  directly  oxygenated  medium,  can  not  be  very 
serviceable  to  the  mammalian  embryo  as  a  lung  ;  and  since 
the  second  system  of  external  blood-vessels  is,  to  the  im- 
placental embryo,  of  no  greater  avail  than  the  first ;  and 
since  the  communication  between  the  embryo  and  the  pla- 
centa among  placental  mammals  might  as  well  or  better 
have  been  made  directly,  instead  of  by  metamorphosis  of 
the  allantois — these  substitutions  appear  unaccountable  as 
results  of  design.  But  they  are  quite  congruous  with  the 
supposition  that  the  mammalian  type  arose  out  of  lower 
vertebrate  types.  For,  in  such  case,  the  mammalian  em- 
bryo, passing  through  states  representing,  more  or  less  dis- 
tinctly, those  which  its  remote  ancestors  had,  in  common 
with  the  lower  verteirafa,  develops  these  subsidiary  organs 
in  like  ways  with  the  lower  vertebrata."  * 

*"Biology,"i,  pp.  359,870. 


238  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

In  what  way,  then,  are  these  substitutions  unaccounta- 
ble as  results  of  design,  and  why  are  they  any  more  con- 
gruous with  the  supposition  that  the  mammalian  type 
arose  out  of  the  lower  vertebrate  type  ?  In  the  first  place, 
it  is  necessary  to  have  a  distinct  conception  of  what  is 
meant  by  design.  In  the  present  case,  it  means  that  for 
a  certain  large  group  of  animals  there  was  established  a 
system  of  reproduction  by  the  sexual  union  of  inale  and 
female,  each  contributing  a  cellular  substance  peculiar  to 
itself,  in  the  formation  of  a  compound  cellular  substance  in 
which  the  separate  substances  are  united,  and  which  is  to 
be  developed  into  the  foetus  by  a  law  of  growth  ;  and  as  a 
further  design  there  is  wrapped  up  in  the  compound  germ 
of  each  distinct  species  of  animal  a  typical  plan  of  ultimate 
form  and  structure.  This  typical  plan  can  not  be  detected 
in  the  germ  itself,  as  it  is  too  subtile  and  obscure  even  for 
the  microscope  ;  but  we  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  it 
is  there  in  all  its  distinctness  of  original  purpose,  because 
at  a  later  stage  of  the  embryonic  development  we  find  a  dis- 
tinct species  of  animal  is  the  result.  This  is  a  conclusion 
that  must  be  adopted  by  the  evolutionist,  as  well  as  by  the 
believer  in  special  creations,  because  it  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  question  of  how  distinct  species  came  to  exist. 
Whether  they  were  designedly  and  separately  created,  or 
were  evolved  out  of  one  another,  the  reproductive  process 
by  which  the  individuals  of  the  same  species  are  brought 
into  being  alike  involves  the  conclusion  that,  in  the  ante- 
foetal  germ  of  that  species,  there  is  somehow  involved,  in  a 
form  so  minute  that  it  can  not  be  seen,  the  type  of  animal 
which  is  to  belong  to  that  species,  and  to  no  other.  Here, 
then,  we  have  the  grand  and  compound  design  which  is  to 
obtain  throughout  a  whole  group  of  different  animals ; 
namely,  that  they  shall  multiply  in  the  production  of  in- 
dividuals of  their  own  types,  by  a  sexual  union,  in  which 
the  male  and  the  female  each  contributes  a  cellular  sub- 


EMBRYONIC  CHANGES.  239 

stance  of  its  own  to  the  formation  of  a  compound  germ, 
and  in  that  germ  there  is  made  to  reside  the  typical  form 
and  structure  of  a  distinct  organism,  so  minute  that  we 
can  not  see  it,  but  which  we  must  conclude  from  the  result 
has  been  put  there  to  be  developed  by  a  law  of  growth  or- 
dained for  the  accomplishment  of  a  certain  distinct  order 
of  beings.  But  the  very  obscurity  of  this  type,  in  the  earli- 
est stage  of  embryonic  development,  leads  to  the  conclusion 
that  while  it  will  never  be  lost,  so  long  as  its  life  is  preserved, 
it  will  unfold  itself  in  ways  that  will  be  equally  beyond  our 
ken,  until  the  point  is  reached  where  it  is  no  longer  ob- 
scured, but  where  it  is  revealed  in  all  its  distinctness  of 
outline  and  its  peculiarity  of  structure.  What  is  certain 
and  invariable  is,  that  the  type  peculiar  to  the  species  is  at 
some  time  in  the  growth  of  the  individual  animal  perfectly 
developed.  But  in  the  modes  of  its  development  through 
different  embryonic  stages,  there  will  be  variations  and  sub- 
stitutions of  organs  in  the  different  species,  but  in  each  dis- 
tinct species  these  variations  and  substitutions  will  be  uni- 
formly the  same,  because  the  law  of  development  imposed 
by  the  distinct  type,  while  it  may  operate  differently  among 
different  species,  will  always  operate  in  the  same  way  in  the 
same  species.  Thus  in  one  animal  the  development  from 
the  original  type  which  was  implanted  in  its  seminal  ante- 
foetal  germ  may  at  one  stage  exhibit  an  organ  for  which  at 
a  later  stage  another  organ  will  be  substituted  ;  and  in  an- 
other animal  a  seemingly  corresponding  organ  may  serve  a 
different  purpose,  or  may  altogether  abort.  These' embry- 
ologic  phenomena,  varying  in  different  species,  but  occur- 
ring uniformly  in  the  same  species,  are  necessarily  among 
the  most  obscure  of  all  the  phenomena  of  animal  life,  on 
account  of  the  fact  that  they  take  place  where  we  can  not 
watch  the  changes  or  modifications  as  they  are  taking  place 
during  actual  foetal  life.  But  they  are  no  more  explicable 
upon,  the  hypothesis  of  the  descent  of  distinct  animals  from 


240  CREATIOl^  OR  EVOLUTIO:&T? 

a  common  stock,  than  they  are  upon  the  hypothesis  of  dis- 
tinct creations  of  species.  Upon  the  former  hypothesis, 
the  assumed  propinquity  of  descent  implies  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  same  mode  of  emhryonic  development  until  it 
becomes  varied  by  the  oioeration  of  causes  that  bring  about 
a  new  habit  of  development,  and  then  a  fixation  in  this  new 
habit  after  a  new  species  or  a  new  ancestral  stock  is  formed  ; 
so  that  in  each  distinct  species  there  comes  at  length  to  be 
a  uniform  process  of  substituting  and  suppressing  organs, 
or  changing  the  functions  of  organs.  But  how  are  we  to 
account  for  the  operation  of  causes  that  have  preserved  a 
parallelism  of  development,  along  with  the  operation  of 
causes  that  have  produced  the  different  modes  of  develop- 
ment, when  all  the  species  are  supposed  to  be  derived  from 
a  common  ancestral  stock,  which  first  began  to  procreate 
and  to  develop  its  descendants  in  one  and  the  same  way  ? 
What  are  the  facts  which  will  enable  us  to  say  that  the 
mammalian  type  arose  out  of  the  lower  vertebrate  types, 
when  we  compare  the  different  modes  of  their  embryologic 
development  ?  How  are  we  to  estimate  the  chances  for  a 
preservation  of  so  much  resemblance  as  exists  between  the 
two  in  their  embryologic  lives,  and  the  chances  for  the 
variations  that  are  observable  ?  What  we  can  safely  con- 
clude is  that  there  is  a  law  which  holds  each  species  in  a 
constant  repetition  of  its  own  foetal  growth,  according  to 
its  unvarying  development  in  the  same  series  of  changes, 
substitutions,  or  suppressions.  But  we  can  not  safely  con- 
clude that  this  species  became  formed  in  the  supposed  pro- 
cess of  descent  from  a  remote  ancestral  stock,  which  may 
or  may  not  have  originally  exhibited  the  same  series  of 
changes,  substitutions,  or  suppressions.  If  the  ancestors 
of  the  mammalian  vertebrates  were  the  kind  of  animal 
supposed,  we  have  to  find,  in  order  to  justify  the  supposed 
descent,  those  states  which  represent  the  correspondence 
between  the  mode  in  which  the  ancestral  stock  developed 


HOW  CREATION  DEALS  WITH  EMBRYOLOGY.    241 

its  own  embryos,  when  compared  with  the  mode  in  which 
the  type  of  the  lower  vertebrata  developed  its  embryos, 
so  as  to  make  it  reasonably  certain  that  these  subsidiary 
organs  derived  their  several  substitutions  or  suppressions 
from  the  process  of  descent,  and  not  from  any  special  mode 
of  development  ordained  for  each  distinct  species.  We 
may  imagine  these  states  through  which  the  mammalian 
embryo  has  passed,  but  as  yet  we  have  only  a  theory  which 
suggests  their  existence  without  facts  to  support  it.  The 
truth  would  seem  to  be  that  this  whole  subject  of  compara- 
tive embryology,  upon  the  hypothesis  of  the  kinship  of  all 
organized  beings,  or  the  descent  of  many  distinct  species 
from  a  common  stock,  is  involved  in  very  great  difficulties  ; 
not  the  least  of  which  is  the  difficulty  of  explaining  how 
the  diverging  descendants  from  that  stock  came  to  be 
endowed  with  habits  of  embryologic  life  and  growth  that 
resulted  in  the  production  of  very  different  modes  of  de- 
velopment, and  at  the  same  time  preserved  for  each  new 
species  its  own  peculiar  mode  of  development.  To  say,  for 
example,  that  the  mammalian  embryo  passed  through  states 
representing,  more  or  less  distinctly,  those  which  its  remote 
ancestors  had  in  common  with  the  lower  vertebrata,  and  that 
it  developed  certain  subsidiary  organs  in  like  ways  with  the 
lower  vertebrata,  is  merely  to  state  a  theory,  which,  with- 
out some  evidence  that  the  mammalian  embryo  was  a  for- 
mation resulting  from  a  connection  of  lives  with  lives  back 
to  a  common  ancestor  whose  embryo  was  developed  as  those 
of  the  lower  vertebrata  are,  amounts  to  nothing.  Often  as 
this  want  of  evidence  has  been'  adverted  to,  it  must  be  here 
again  pointed  out :  for  the  whole  argument  from  embry- 
ology, like  that  derived  from  a  comparison  of  the  forms  of 
mature  animals,  lacks  the  support  of  facts  that  are  essential 
to  show  the  connection  of  life  with  life  which  descent  from 
a  common  ancestral  stock  necessarily  implies. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  hypothesis  of  the  distinct  crea- 


242  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

tion  of  different  species  deals  with  the  phenomena  of  em- 
bryologic  life  in  a  very  different  way.  It  supposes  the 
creation  of  a  pair,  male  and  female,  and  a  law  of  procreation, 
designed  for  the  multiplication  of  individuals  of  a  fixed 
type.  It  supposes  many  such  creations,  each  having  in  its 
own  peculiar  germ  the  characteristic  type  of  organism  that 
will  distinguish  the  mature  animal  from  all  the  others.  It 
supposes  finally  a  law  of  development  common  to  all  the 
species  the  individuals  of  which  are  multiplied  by  the  sex- 
ual union  of  male  and  female  ;  a  law  of  growth  under  like 
conditions,  which  leads  to  a  parallelism  of  development  until 
the  typical  plan  of  form  and  structure  designed  for  each 
distinct  animal,  and  implanted  in  its  germ,  begins  to  take 
on  a  mode  of  development  peculiar  to  that  species,  and  at 
length  the  perfect  individual  of  that  species  is  the  result. 
In  this  hypothesis,  therefore,  there  is  no  necessity  for  re- 
sorting to  any  connection  with  an  imaginary  ancestral  stock 
of  a  different  type,  or  for  resorting  to  a  theoretical  process  by 
which  successive  generations  may  be  supposed  to  have  grad- 
ually arisen  out  of  the  ancestral  stock  by  successive  changes 
which  have  at  length  resulted  in  a  totally  new  species. 
The  new  species  is  what  is  supposed  to  have  been  aborigi- 
nally created,  and  to  have  been  placed  under  its  own  law 
for  the  multiplication  of  individuals  of  the  same  type.  In 
point  of  simplicity,  of  comparative  certainty,  of  freedom 
from  accidental  causes  of  variation  of  which  we  can  predi- 
cate no  specific  result,  this  hypothesis  seems  to  have  a  far 
greater  degree  of  probable  evidence  in  its  favor  than  the 
theory  which  entirely  lacks  the  requisite  evidence  of  inter- 
mediate connections  between  the  lives  of  one  species  with 
the  lives  of  a  remote  and  different  species.  For,  while  it 
may  be  truly  said  that  no  man  ever  saw  a  special  creation 
take  place,  and  while  such  an  act  of  the  infinite  power  is  of 
a  nature  that  places  it  beyond  the  observation  of  our  senses, 
it  is  neither  inconceivable  nor  improbable,  nor  inconsistent 


DIFFICULTIES  TO  BE  ENCOUNTERED.  243 

with  the  idea  of  the  divine  attributes  which  we  derive  from 
the  study  of  nature.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  only  equal- 
ly true  that  no  man  ever  saw,  or  in  the  nature  of  things  ever 
can  see,  an  evolution  of  distinct  species  out  of  other  distinct 
species,  but  the  whole  nature  of  the  supposed  process  of  trans- 
formation involves  an  element  of  chance  which  forbids  all 
calculation  of  the  results.  How,  for  example,  in  this  very 
matter  of  comparative  embryological  development  on  the 
hypothesis  of  descent  of  all  the  species  of  the  vertebrate  ani- 
mals from  a  common  ancestral  stock  of  a  different  type,  are 
we  to  account  for  the  fact  that  the  embryo  of  any  one  of  the 
descended  species  has  come  to  be  developed  in  a  mode 
peculiar  to  itself  and  differing  from  the  mode  in  which  the 
embryo  of  the  ancestral  stock  was  developed  ?  The  law  of 
sexual  union,  under  which  the  individuals  of  the  supposed 
ancestral  stock  were  multiplied,  must  have  imposed  on  that 
species  an  invincible  necessity  of  reproducing  in  its  off- 
spring the  same  type  that  constituted  the  peculiar  organ- 
ism of  the  parents,  whether  these  parents  were  or  were  not 
the  fittest  survivors  of  their  race  after  the  severest  struggle 
for  existence  which  they  may  have  had  to  undergo.  If  the 
pair,  or  the  male  of  that  pair,  has  in  the  course  of  that 
struggle  acquired  a  new  organ,  or  more  completely  devel- 
oped an  old  one,  before  the  act  of  procreation  takes  place, 
how  is  it  that  the  ovum  is  developed  into  the  foetus,  and  the 
foetus  into  the  newly  born  infant,  in  an  invariable  mode 
peculiar  to  the  species  to  which  the  parents  belonged  ? 
Why  did  not  the  same  causes  of  variation  which  are  sup- 
posed to  have  changed  the  ancestral  type  into  one  of  a  new 
and  entirely  distinct  character,  also  vary  the  mode  of  foetal 
development  ?  When  and  how  did  the  new  organs  become 
fixed  in  the  type  which  the  parents  have  transmitted  to  the 
offspring  ?  And  if  they  became  so  fixed  in  the  germ  which 
was  formed  "out  of  the  cellular  substance  contributed  by 
each  of  the  parents,  why  do  we  find  in  every  known  species 
12 


244  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

participating  in  this  process  of  reproduction  a  uniform 
mode  of  embryologic  development  peculiar  to  the  species, 
and  exhibiting  its  own  suppressions  and  substitutions  of 
organs,  irrespective  of  any  newly  acquired  peculiarities  in 
the  individual  structures  of  the  parents  ? 

The  believer  in  special  creations  has  to  answer  no  such 
questions  as  these.  His  hypothesis  assumes  the  creation  of 
a  pair  of  animals  of  a  certain  distinct  species  ;  a  law  of  pro- 
creation and  gestation  common  to  a  vast  multitude  of  or- 
ganisms ;  and  a  law  of  embryologic  growth  peculiar  to  each 
species.  Whatever  peculiarities  of  structure  may  have 
been  possessed  by  the  immediate  parents  of  any  individual 
of  any  one  of  these  different  species — peculiarities  which 
did  not  separate  the  parents  from  their  race,  but  only  made 
them  the  fittest  survivors  of  their  race — ^those  peculiarities 
would  or  would  not  descend  to  their  immediate  offspring, 
according  to  varying  and  very  inappreciable  circumstances. 
But  that  which  constituted  the  special  type  of  the  race, 
and  especially  that  which  constituted  its  peculiar  mode  of 
development  during  the  embryonic  stage,  would  remain  un- 
affected by  these  incidental  and  accidental  peculiarities  of 
the  parents,  because,  from  all  that  we  can  discover,  that 
special  type  was  impressed  upon  the  embryo  at  the  earli- 
est stage  of  its  existence,  and  constituted  the  living  model 
that  was  to  be  developed  into  the  perfect  animal  of  that 
species,  by  a  law  which  placed  it  beyond  the  influence  of 
any  adventitious  and  non-essential  advantages  which  the 
male  or  female  parent  may  have  acquired  over  other  in- 
dividuals of  the  same  race.  So  that,  if  the  postulate  of 
a  special  creation  of  species  be  assumed  as  the  groundwork 
of  the  reasoning,  we  have  to  go  through  with  no  specu- 
lations about  a  common  ancestral  stock  of  all  the  species, 
and  we  have  to  account  for  no  phenomena  that  are  ex- 
posed to  chances  which  might  have  produced  very  differ- 
ent results  from  those  which  are  open  to  our  observation, 


THE  "ALLANTOIS."  245 

and  results  of  which  we  can  predicate  nothing  with  any  de- 
gree of  certainty.  On  the  hypothesis  of  the  special  creation 
of  a  species,  and  an  aboriginal  pair  of  each  species,  with  all 
that  this  implies,  we  can  with  a  high  degree  of  certainty 
predicate  most  of  the  phenomena  that  we  have  to  observe, 
and  more  especially  so  much  of  the  phenomena  of  embry- 
ologic  growth  of  the  different  species  as  are  open  to  our  in- 
vestigation after  the  life  of  both  mother  and  embryo  has 
become  extinct. 

It  only  remains  for  me  to  give  to  this  reasoning  a  con- 
crete application.  Take  the  case  made  use  of  by  Mr.  Spen- 
cer in  the  passage  above  cited — that  of  the  "allantois,"  a 
vascular  membrane,  which  is  said  to  be  in  the  mammalian 
embryo  homologous  with  one  which  in  the  higher  oviparous 
vertebrates,  such  as  the  birds  and  reptiles,  replaces  what 
was  at  first  a  breathing  apparatus,  and  becomes  for  them, 
during  the  rest  of  embryonic  life,  a  sort  of  lung,  or  an 
organ  that  aerates  the  blood  until  the  permanent  respiratory 
organs  come  into  play.  In  the  mammalian  embryo,  the 
first  appliance  for  aerating  the  blood  is  described  as  a  system 
of  vessels  distributed  over  the  area  vasculosa,  and  like  that 
which  is  first  observable  for  the  same  purpose  in  fishes. 
But,  as  the  mammalian  embryo  continues  to  grow,  a  change 
takes  place.  There  buds  out  from  it  the  vascular  mem- 
brane called  the  **allantois,"  which  is  substituted  in  the 
place  of  the  first  aerating  apparatus.  Then  a  further 
change  takes  place,  as  between  the  higher  oviparous  verte- 
brates and  the  mammalian  vertebrates.  In  the  former,  the 
"allantois"  continues  to  perform  the  breathing  function 
through  the  rest  of  the  embryonic  life.  In  the  mammalian 
vertebrates  it  undergoes  two  changes  :  In  the  implacental 
mammals,  it  aborts,  having  no  function  to  discharge  ;  in  the 
placental  mammals  it  becomes  modified  into  another  organ, 
namely,  that  which  serves  to  convey  nutrition  from  the 
mother  to  the  offspring.     After  birth,  it  is  of  course  ended. 


216  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

Now,  the  reasoning,  or  rather  the  assertion,  that  these 
substitutions  are  unaccountable  as  the  results  of  design, 
appears  to  me  to  be  singularly  inconclusiye.  It  is  quite 
illogical,  according  to  all  philosophic  meaning  of  design  as 
applied  to  the  works  of  the  Creator,  or  to  the  works  of  na- 
ture, if  that  term  is  preferred,  to  argue  that  a  particular 
object  could  have  been  better  accomplished  directly,  than 
by  a  metamorphosis  of  an  organ  from  one  function  to 
another,  or  by  substitution.  The  metamorphosis,  or  substi- 
tution, which  in  such  cases  we  find  in  nature,  is  of  itself  the 
very  highest  evidence  that  the  indirect  method  was  the 
best,  if  we  admit  the  idea  of  a  Creator,  because  it  was  the 
method  chosen  by  a  being  of  infinite  perfections  for  reasons 
which  we  may  not  be  able  to  discover,  but  which  we  must 
presume  to  have  existed,  if  we  concede  that  hypothesis  of 
attributes  which  *'  design  "  in  this  case  necessarily  implies. 
But  how  are  these  metamorphoses  and  substitutions  any 
more  accountable  upon  the  supposition  that  the  mammalian 
type  arose  by  generation  out  of  the  lower  vertebrate  types 
which  in  their  embryonic  life  exhibited  the  same  changes  ? 
The  doctrine  or  theory  of  evolution  does  not  account  for 
them  at  all ;  for,  while  the  doctrine  supposes,  as  matters  of 
pure  theory,  that  there  were  certain  states  through  which 
'the  mammalian  embryo  passed,  which  represented  more  or 
less  distinctly  those  which  it  had  in  common  with  its  as- 
sumed remote  ancestors,  the  lower  vertebrata,  it  does 
nothing  more  than  to  suggest  the  theoretical  idea  that  the 
mammalian  embryo  came  to  develop  these  subsidiary  organs 
in  the  mode  in  which  they  were  developed  in  the  embryo 
of  the  lower  vertebrata,  because  it  was  descended  from  the 
lower  vertebrata.  The  varying  states  through  which  the 
embryo  passed  from  the  lower  vertebrata  to  the  mammalian 
type,  are  all  hypothetical,  and  there  is,  therefore,  no  basis 
of  fact  on  which  to  rest  the  belief  in  a  common  mode  of 
development,  as  resulting  from  a  connection  of  lives  with 


ARGUMENT  FROM  DISTRIBUTION.  24Y 

lives  between  the  mammalian  type  and  the  ty^Des  of  birds, 
reptiles,  or  fishes. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  hypothesis  of  the  special  creation 
of  a  species  implies  the  simple  fact  of  a  designed  process  of 
embryonic  development  for  each  species,  with  substitutions 
of  organs  and  changes  of  function  in  certain  organs  peculiar 
to  that  species  ;  a  fact  which  may  well  consist  in  a  certain 
parallelism  in  the  different  metamorphoses,  and  a  preserva- 
tion of  the  same  unvarying  changes  in  the  development  of 
each  separate  embryo.  Why  these  changes  should  exist,  we 
can  not  tell ;  but  their  existence  is  very  strong  proof  that 
they  were  designed,  or  made  to  take  place,  for  some  reason, 
if  we  admit  the  hypothesis  of  a  Creator.  For  that  hypothe- 
sis, we  must  look  to  a  wider  class  of  facts,  and  to  the  whole 
phenomena  of  nature. 

4.  We  now  come  to  the  argument  from  distribution. 
This  is  one  of  the  weakest  of  the  indirect  supports  of  the 
doctrine  of  evolution ;  but,  as  it  is  much  relied  upon,  it 
must  be  stated  with  all  the  force  that  it  is  supposed  to 
have.  The  facts  that  are  relied  upon  are  these  :  When  we 
survey  the  whole  surface  of  the  globe,  so  far  as  it  is  known 
to  us,  we  find,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  areas  which  have 
similar  conditions  (of  soil  and  climate),  and  sometimes, 
where  the  areas  are  nearly  adjacent,  are  occupied  by  quite 
different  faunas.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  said  that  areas 
remote  from  each  other  in  latitude,  and  contrasted  in  soil 
and  climate,  are  occupied  by  closely  allied  faunas.  The 
inference  drawn  is,  that  there  is  no  manifest  predetermined 
adaptation  of  the  organisms  to  the  areas,  or  habitats,  in 
which  they  are  found,  because  we  do  not  find  that  like  or- 
ganisms are  universally  or  generally  found  in  like  habitats, 
nor  very  unlike  organisms  in  very  unlike  habitats.  The 
conclusion  is,  that  the  facts  of  distribution  in  space  do  not 
conform  to  the  hypothesis  of  design.  In  other  words,  the 
different  animals  found  in  different  regions  were  not  spe- 


248  CREATION  OR  EYOLUTIOl!?-? 

cially  designed  for  those  regions,  but  some  of  them  haye 
extended  into  regions  of  a  different  character ;  and  when 
the  regions  are  very  unlike  there  are  not  found  very  unlike 
organisms,  but  there  is  a  general  similarity,  or  a  less  exten- 
sive variety.  There  is  said,  also,  to  be  another  important 
fact,  namely,  that  *'the  similar  areas  peopled  by  dissimilar 
forms  are  those  between  which  there  are  impassable  bar- 
riers ;  while  the  dissimilar  areas  peopled  by  similar  forms, 
are  those  between  which  there  are  no  such  barriers." 
Hence  is  drawn  the  conclusion  that  ''each  species  of  or- 
ganism tends  ever  to  expand  its  sphere  of  existence — to  in- 
trude on  other  areas,  other  modes  of  life,  other  media."  *  A 
good  deal  of  aid  is  supposed  to  be  derived  for  this  argument 
respecting  animal  life  by  analogies  drawn  from  the  vegeta- 
ble kingdom  ;  but  I  can  not  help  thinking  that  there  is 
much  caution  to  be  observed  in  formulating  such  analogies 
into  a  law  of  universal  application,  or  into  one  that  relates 
to  the  existence  of  animal  organisms.  The  origin,  the 
multiplication,  and  the  spread  of  animals  involve  a  princi- 
ple of  life,  organization  and  development  which  is  very  dif- 
ferent in  some  important  respects  from  that  which  obtains 
in  the  vegetable  world.  But,  without  laying  any  stress 
upon  this  distinction,  and  without  intending  to  deprive 
the  argument  for  animal  evolution  of  any  aid  which  it  can 
derive  from  such  supposed  analogies,  I  pass  to  the  specific 
argument  respecting  animal  distribution.  The  argument 
is  this  :  Races  of  organisms  become  distributed  over  differ- 
ent areas,  and  also  through  different  media.  They  are 
thrust  by  the  pressure  of  overpopulation  from  their  old 
into  new  habitats,  and  as  they  diverge  more  widely  in 
space  they  undergo  more  and  more  modifications  of  struct- 
ure, by  reason  of  the  new  conditions  on  which  they  enter. 
Thus,  these  powerfully  incident  forees,  the  new  conditions 

*"Biology,*'i,  p.  888. 


DISTRIBUTION  IN  TIME.  249 

on  whicli  the  migrating  races  enter  in  new  regions,  vary 
the  structure  which  they  originally  brought  with  them,  and 
which  descended  to  them  from  the  common  stock  of  which 
they  were  modified  descendants.  The  widest  divergences 
in  space,  under  such  circumstances,  will  indicate  the  long- 
est periods  of  time  during  which  these  various  descendants 
from  a  common  stock  have  been  subject  to  modifying  con- 
ditions. There  will,  therefore,  come  to  be,  it  is  said, 
among  organisms  of  the  same  group,  smaller  contrasts  of 
structure  in  the  smaller  areas  ;  and,  where  the  varying  in- 
cident forces  vary  greatly  within  given  areas,  the  alterations 
will  become  more  numerous  than  in  equal  areas  which  are 
less  variously  conditioned  :  that  is  to  say,  in  the  most  uni- 
form regions  there  will  be  the  fewest  species,  and  in  the 
most  multiform  regions  there  will  be  the  most  numerous 
species.  These  hypotheses  are  said  to  be  in  accordance 
with  the  facts  of  distribution  in  space.* 

But  there  are  also  facts  of  distribution  through  differ- 
ent media.  The  meaning  of  this  is,  that,  whereas  all  forms 
of  organisms  have  descended  from  some  primordial  simplest 
form,  which  inhabited  some  one  medium,  such  as  the  water, 
its  descendants,  by  migration  into  some  other  medium  or 
other  media,  underwent  adaptations  to  media  quite  unlike 
the  original  medium.  In  other  words,  the  earth  and  the 
air  have  been  colonized  from  the  water.  Numerous  facts 
are  adduced  in  support  of  this  conclusion,  which  are  thus 
summarized  : 

There  are  particular  habitats  in  which  animals  are  subject  to 
changes  of  media.  In  such  habitats  exist  animals  having,  in  various 
degrees,  the  power  to  live  in  both  media,  consequent  on  various 
phases  of  transitional  organization.  Near  akin  to  these  animals, 
there  are  some  that,  after  passing  their  early  lives  in  the  water, 
acquire  more  completely  the  structures  fitting  them  to  live  on  land, 
to  which  they  then  migrate.    Lastly,  we  have  closely-allied  creat- 

*" Biology,"!,  pp.  890,  391. 


250  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

nres  like  the  Surinam  toad  and  the  terrestrial  salamander,  which, 
though  they  belong  by  their  structures  to  the  class  Amphibia,  are 
not  amphibious  in  their  habits — creatures  the  larvae  of  which  do 
not  pass  their  early  lives  in  the  water,  and  yet  go  through  these  same 
metamorphoses !  Must  we,  then,  think  that  the  distribution  of  kin- 
dred organisms  through  different  media  presents  an  insurmountable 
difficulty  ?  On  the  contrary,  with  facts  like  these  before  us,  the  evo- 
lution-hypothesis supplies  possible  interpretations  of  many  phenom- 
ena that  are  else  unaccountable.  Realizing  the  way  in  which  such 
changes  of  media  are  in  some  cases  gradually  imposed  by  physical 
conditions,  and  in  other  cases  voluntarily  commenced  and  slowly 
increased  in  the  search  after  food,  we  shall  begin  to  understand 
how,  in  the  course  of  evolution,  there  have  arisen  those  strange 
obscurations  of  one  type  by  the  externals  of  another  type.  When 
we  see  land-birds  occasionally  feeding  by  the  water-side,  and  then 
learn  that  one  of  them,  the  water-ouzel,  an  "  anomalous  member  of 
the  strictly  terrestrial  thrush  family,  wholly  subsists  by  diving — 
grasping  the  stones  with  its  feet  and  using  its  wings  under  water  " 
— we  are  enabled  to  comprehend  how,  under  pressure  of  population, 
aquatic  habits  may  be  acquired  by  creatures  organized  for  aerial 
life ;  and  how  there  may  eventually  arise  an  ornithic  type,  in  which 
the  traits  of  the  bird  are  very  much  disguised. 

Finding  among  mammals  some  that,  in  search  of  prey  or  shelter, 
have  taken  to  the  water  in  various  degrees,  we  shall  cease  to  be 
perplexed  on  discovering  the  mammalian  structure  hidden  under  a 
fish -like  form,  as  it  is  in  the  Cetacea.  Grant  that  there  has  even 
been  going  on  that  redistribution  of  organisms  which  we  see  still 
resulting  from  their  intrusions  on  one  another's  areas,  media,  and 
modes  of  life,  and  we  have  an  explanation  of  those  multitudinous 
cases  in  which  homologies  of  structure  are  complicated  with  analo- 
gies. And  while  it  accounts  for  the  occurrence,  in  one  medium  of  or- 
ganic types  fundamentally  organized  for  another  medium,  the  doctrine 
of  evolution  accounts  also  for  the  accompanying  unfitness.  Either  the 
seal  has  descended  from  some  mammal  which,  little  by  little,  became 
aquatic  in  its  habits,  in  which  case  the  structure  of  its  hind-limbs  has 
a  meaning ;  or  else  it  was  specially  framed  for  its  present  habitat, 
in  which  case  the  structure  of  its  hind-limbs  is  incomprehensible.* 

*"Biology,"i,  p.  396. 


DISTRIBUTION  IN  TIME.  251 

Along  with  these  phenomena  of  distribution  in  space 
and  in  medium  of  life,  we  have  the  further  element  of  dis- 
tribution in  time ;  the  facts  of  which  are  admitted,  how- 
ever, to  be  too  fragmentary  to  be  conclusive  either  for  or 
against  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  Still  it  is  claimed  that 
there  is  one  general  truth  respecting  distribution  in  time, 
which  is  *' profoundly  significant,  namely,  that  the  rela- 
tions between  the  extinct  forms  of  life,  found  by  geological 
exploration,  and  the  present  forms  of  life,  especially  in  each 
great  geographical  region,  show  in  the  aggregate  a  close 
kinship,  and  a  connection  which  is  in  perfect  harmony  with 
the  belief  in  evolution,  but  quite  irreconcilable  with  any 
other  belief.  As  Mr.  Darwin  has  expressed  it,  there  is  *  a 
wonderful  relationship  in  the  same  continent  between  the 
living  and  the  dead.' "  * 

The  argument  from  distribution  is  thus  summed  up  by 
Mr.  Spencer  : 

Given,  then,  that  pressure  which  species  exercise  on  one  another, 
in  consequence  of  the  universal  overfilling  of  their  respective  habi- 
tats— given  the  resulting  tendency  to  thrust  themselves  into  one 
another's  areas,  and  media,  and  modes  of  life,  along  such  lines  of 
least  resistance  as  from  time  to  time  are  found — given,  besides  the 
changes  in  modes  of  life  hence  arising,  those  other  changes  which 
physical  alterations  of  habitats  necessitate— given  the  structural 
modifications  directly  or  indirectly  produced  in  organisms  by  modi- 
fied conditions — and  the  facts  of  distribution  in  space  and  time  are 
accounted  for.  That  divergence  and  redivergence  of  organic  forms, 
which  we  saw  to  be  shadowed  forth  by  the  truths  of  classification 
and  the  truths  of  embryology,  wo  see  to  be  also  shadowed  forth  by 
the  truths  of  distribution.  If  that  aptitude  to  multiply,  to  spread, 
to  separate,  and  to  differentiate,  which  the  human  races  have  in  all 

*  "  Biology,"  i,  p.  399.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  relationship  here  re- 
ferred to  is  supposed  or  apparent  kinship  between  the  aggregate  of  the  sur- 
viving and  the  aggregate  of  the  extinct  forms  which  have  died  out  in  recent 
geologic  times.  But  this  does  not  supply  the  steps  of  descent  by  which 
any  one  surviving  form  can  be  traced  back  to  any  one  extinct  form. 


252  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

times  shown,  be  a  tendency  common  to  races  in  general,  as  we  have 
ample  reason  to  assume,  then  there  will  result  that  kind  of  relation 
among  the  species,  and  genera,  and  orders,  peopling  the  earth's 
surface,  which  we  find  exists.  Those  remarkable  identities  of  type 
discovered  between  organisms  inhabiting  one  medium,  and  strangely- 
modified  organisms  inhabiting  another  medium,  are  at  the  same  time 
rendered  comprehensible.  And  the  appearances  and  disappearances 
of  species  which  the  geological  record  shows  us,  as  well  as  the  con- 
nections between  successive  groups  of  species  from  early  eras  down 
to  our  own,  cease  to  be  inexphcable.* 

Passing  by  what  is  here  said  of  the  aptitude  of  the  hu- 
man race  to  multiply,  to  spread,  to  separate,  and  to  differ- 
entiate— an  aptitude  which  has  never  resulted  in  the  produc- 
tion of  an  essentially  different  animal,  or  in  anything  but 
incidental  variations  within  the  limits  of  the  same  species — 
I  propose  now  to  apply  to  this  argument  from  distribution 
a  test  which  seems  to  me  to  be  a  perfectly  fair  one,  and  one 
which  it  ought  to  be  able  to  encounter.  If  the  theory  that 
the  different  species  of  animals  now  known  to  us  have  been 
evolved  successively  by  descent  from  some  primordial  sim- 
plest form  through  modifications  induced  by  change  of 
habitation,  of  medium  of  life,  and  accumulation  of  new 
structures  occurring  through  an  immense  period  of  time, 
be  a  sound  hypothesis,  the  process  which  bas  evolved  supe- 
rior out  of  inferior  organizations  ought,  in  consistency  with 
itself  and  with  all  its  supposed  conditions,  to  be  capable  of 
being  reversed,  so  as  to  lead  to  the  evolution  of  inferior  out 
of  superior  organisms.  For,  although  the  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution has  thus  far  been  applied  only  to  facts  which  are 
supposed  to  show  an  ascent  in  the  scale  of  being,  the  argu- 
ment ought  to  be  equally  good  for  a  descent  in  the  scale  of 
being,  provided  we  take  care  to  include  all  the  elements  and 
causes  of  a  change  of  structure,  mode  and  medium  of  life, 
and  the  necessary  element  of  time,  in  the  operation  of  the 

*"Biology,"i,  p.  401. 


EVOLUTION  REVERSED.  253 

process.  The  imaginary  case  that  is  about  to  be  put  shall 
include  all  the  elements  of  the  evolutionary  hypothesis, 
and  will  serve  to  test  at  least  the  rationality  of  that  theory. 
Let  it  be  supposed,  then,  that  there  was  a  period  in  the 
history  of  this  earth  when  the  whole  human  race,  however 
it  originated,  was  confined  to  an  island,  thousands  of  miles 
from  any  other  land.  This  race  of  men  adapted  to  a  life 
in  one  medium,  the  air,  may  be  supposed  to  have  so  far 
advanced  in  the  ruder  arts  of  hunting  and  fishing,  and  in 
the'higher  art  of  tillage,  as  to  be  able  for  many  generations 
to  support  life  by  what  the  sea  and  the  land  would  put 
within  their  reach,  and  by  the  product  which  their  rude 
agriculture  could  extract  from  the  soil,  or  which  the  soil 
would  spontaneously  yield.  But  as  the  centuries  flow  on, 
the  population  begins  to  press  upon  the  resources  of  the  ter- 
ritory, and  the  struggle  for  life  becomes  very  great.  At 
length  a  point  is  reached  where  the  supply  of  food  from 
the  land  becomes  inadequate  to  sustain  the  population, 
and  what  can  be  made  up  from  the  sea  will  not  supply  the 
deficiency.  The  population  will  then  slowly  decrease,  but, 
while  this  decrease  goes  on,  there  comes  in  a  disturbing 
cause  which  will  prevent  any  adjustmeut  of  the  supply  of 
food  to  the  diminished  number  of  the  consumers.  The 
sea  begins  by  almost  imperceptible  but  steadily  progressing 
encroachments  to  diminish  the  area  of  dry  land  ;  a  change 
of  climate  reduces  the  number  of  other  animals  available 
for  human  food,  and  reduces  the  productive  capacity  of  the 
earth.  Then  ensues  that  struggle  for  existence  which  is 
supposed  to  entail  changes  of  medium  of  life,  and  to  induce 
transformations  of  structure.  The  conditions  of  existence 
have  become  wholly  changed.  The  wretched  descendants 
of  a  once  comparatively  thriving  race  are  dwelling  on  a 
territory  which  has  become  a  marsh.  They  have  no  means 
of  migrating  to  another  territory ;  they  can  only  migrate 
to  another  medium.     They  begin  by  feeding  exclusively  on 


254  CREATION  OR  EYOLUTIOJiT? 

what  the  water  will  afford.  They  pass  their  lives  in  the 
pursuit  of  a  prey  which  lives  only  in  the  water,  and  in  this 
change  of  life  they  acquire  or  develop  organs  adapted  to 
the  new  condition,  organs  which,  in  such  miserable  repro- 
duction of  their  own  species  as  can  go  on,  they  transmit  to 
their  offspring.  Modifications  upon  modifications  accumu- 
late in  this  way  through  untold  periods  of  time,  until  at 
last  a  new  aquatic  or  a  new  amphibious  creature  is  formed, 
and  the  difference  between  that  creature  and  his  remote 
ancestral  human  stock  is  as  great  as  that  between  man 
and  the  seal,  or  between  man  and  any  fish  that  swims. 
Still,  there  will  be  peculiarities  of  structure  retained,  which 
might  lead  any  inhabitant  of  another  world,  alighting  on 
this  globe  and  undertaking  to  trace  the  origin  of  this  new 
creature,  to  the  supposition  that  he  was  akin  to  a  race  of 
men  whose  fossil  remains  he  might  find  buried  in  some 
stratum  beneath  the  marsh  which  was  the  last  habitat  of 
this  unfortunate  race,  when  it  had  all  the  characteristics  of 
its  original  type. 

Is  it  conceivable  that  this  transformation  could  take 
place  ?  Could  such  a  condition  and  situation  result  in  any- 
thing but  the  utter  extinction  of  the  human  race,  or,  in 
other  words,  in  an  absolute  break  ?  Could  there  be  any 
modifications  exhibited  by  the  last  survivors  of  that  race 
other  than  those  which  are  familiar  to  us  among  the  varie- 
ties of  the  human  species  which  have  never  separated  them- 
selves from  their  race,  and  between  whom  and  their  ances- 
tral stock,  wherever  it  was  originally  placed  on  this  globe,  we 
recognize  no  fundamental  difference  of  structure,  whatever 
may  have  been  the  changes  of  habitat  or  conditions  of  life  ? 
Yet  the  conditions  and  elements  of  this  imaginary  case,  which 
is  simply  the  process  of  evolution  reversed,  are  just  what  the 
evolution  theory  assumes  as  the  causes  of  that  modification 
which  proceeds  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  organism ;  and 
whatever  may  be  said  of  the  tendency,  through  "  the  sur- 


RESTORATION  TO  THE  ORIGINAL  TYPE.        255 

yival  of  the  fittest,"  to  evolve  higher  out  of  lower  forms  of 
animal  life,  if  we  allow  time  enough  for  the  process,  there 
is  no  reason,  in  the  nature  of  things,  why  corresponding 
conditions  should  not  lead  to  a  degradation  as  well  as  to 
an  elevation  in  the  scale  of  beings.  There  is,  however,  one 
reason  why  no  such  potency  should  be  ascribed  to  the  con- 
ditions, either  in  respect  to  the  one  result  or  the  other. 
That  reason  is  that  all  such  causes  of  modification,  either 
in  the  ascending  or  the  descending  scale,  are  so  limited  in 
their  effects  that  distinct  beings  can  not  be  rationally 
predicated  as  their  product,  whereas  the  power  of  the  Infi- 
nite Artificer  to  give  existence  to  distinct  beings  is  abso- 
lutely without  limit.  If  naturalists  would  turn  their  atten- 
tion to  the  limitations  upon  the  power  of  all  such  causes  as 
those  which  are  supposed  to  work  in  the  process  of  evolu- 
tion, and  would  give  us  the  explanations  to  which  those 
limitations  point,  in  those  cases  of  local  variation  which 
are  exhibited  by  animals  that  can  clearly  be  traced  to  a 
parent  form,  they  would  not  be  compelled  to  resort  to  a 
sweeping  theory  that  refuses  all  force  to  any  h3rpothesis  but 
its  own. 

But  now  let  us  go  a  step  further  in  this  imaginary  case. 
Let  us  suppose  that  after  this  new  creature,  fish  or  am- 
phibian, descended  from  the  human  race,  has  inhabited  the 
water  surrounding  the  ill-fated  island  for  a  million  of  years, 
another  great  change  takes  place.  The  water  begins  to  re- 
cede from  the  land  by  gradations  as  slow  as  those  by  which 
in  the  former  period  it  encroached.  The  land  rises  from  the 
low  level  to  which  it  had  sunk,  by  volcanic  action.  Forests 
spring  up  upon  the  sides  of  mountains.  The  soil  becomes 
firm ;  verdure  overspreads  the  fields ;  the  climate  grows 
genial ;  the  wilderness  blossoms  as  the  rose.  Allow  another 
million  years  for  this  restoration  of  the  territory  to  an  inhab- 
itable condition.  Slowly  and  in  an  unbroken  series  of  gen- 
erations the  aquatic  creatures,  descended  from  the  ancient 


256  CREATION  OR  EYOLUTION? 

human  inhabitants  of  the  island,  emerge  from  the  sea  and 
betake  themselves  to  the  land.  Modifications  upon  modifi- 
cations accumulate,  new  organs  are  acquired  ;  the  survival 
of  the  fittest  perpetuates  them ;  the  animals  ascend  in  the 
scale  of  being,  until  the  human  type  is  again  evolved  out 
of  the  degraded  descendants  of  the  population  which  two 
millions  of  years  previously  dwelt  as  men  upon  the  island, 
and  carried  on  in  some  primitive  fashion  the  simpler  arts 
of  human  life.  Is  not  this  just  as  supposable  as  the  evo- 
lution of  the  human  race  out  of  some  lower  form  of  organ- 
ism ?  Are  not  all  the  elements — time,  migration  from  one 
medium  to  another,  change  of  conditions,  and  what  is  sup- 
posed to  lead  to  the  production  of  different  organisms — 
just  as  powerful  to  produce  the  inferior  out  of  the  supe- 
rior as  to  produce  the  superior  out  of  the  inferior,  and  so  on 
interchangeably  ?  The  answer  in  each  case  is,  that  all  such 
causes  of  modification  in  the  animal  kingdom  are  limited  ; 
that  when  once  a  distinct  species  is  in  existence,  we  have 
no  evidence  that  it  loses  its  distinct  type  or  merges  itself  in 
another,  although  the  earth  may  be  full  of  evidence  that 
types  which  formerly  existed  are  no  longer  among  the  liv- 
ing organisms. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

Mr.  Spencer's  agnosticism — ^His  theory  of  the  origin  of  religious  beliefs — 
The  mode  in  which  mankind  are  to  lose  the  consciousness  of  a  per- 
sonal God. 

In^  a  former  chapter  I  had  occasion  to  adyert  to  one  of 
Mr.  Spencer's  favorite  dogmas,  namely,  the  impossibility  of 
an  intellectual  conception  of  creation,  which  he  thinks  is 
made  apparent  by  the  statement  that  one  term  of  the  rela- 
tion, the  thing  created,  is  something,  and  the  other  term  of 
the  relation,  that  out  of  which  the  thing  was  created,  is 
nothing.  When  I  wrote  the  chapter  in  which  I  commented 
on  this  extraordinary  kind  of  logic,  I  felt  a  little  disposed  to 
apologize  to  my  readers  for  answering  it.  I  had  not  then 
met  with  the  fuller  statement  of  Mr  Spencer's  peculiar 
agnosticism  which  I  am  now  about  to  quote.  The  contro- 
versy recently  carried  on  between  Mr.  Spencer  and  Mr. 
Harrison  was  closed  by  the  former  in  an  article  entitled 
"  Last  Words  about  Agnosticism  and  the  Religion  of  Human- 
ity," which  appeared  in  the  "Nineteenth  Century  "  for  No- 
vember, 1884.  This  drew  my  attention  to  a  passage  in  Mr. 
Spencer's  "  Essays,"  which  he  has  reproduced  in  his  late  arti- 
cle for  the  purpose  of  repeating  his  position  against  some  of 
the  misrepresentations  which  he  complains  had  been  made 
of  it  by  Mr.  Harrison.  I  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  con- 
troversy between  these  two  gentlemen,  or  with  any  of  the 
arguments  which  Mr.  Spencer's  opponents,  be  they  church- 
men or  laymen,  have  employed  against  him.  I  take  the 
passage  as  he  has  quoted  it  from  his  ''Essays,"  for  the  pur- 


258  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

pose  of  making  his  agnostic  views  tlie  subject  of  a  more 
extended  commentary  than  I  had  bestowed  on  them  in  my 
previous  chapter,  in  writing  which  I  had  before  me  only  a 
passage  contained  ;n  his  '*  Biology."  There  is  no  occasion, 
however,  for  altering  a  word  of  what  I  had  previously  writ- 
ten ;  for,  on  a  comparison  of  his  position  as  given  in  the 
**  Biology,"  and  that  given  in  the  ^*  Essays,"  it  appears  very 
plainly  that  I  had  not  misunderstood  him.  But  as  the 
passage  in  the  *'  Essays  "  displays  much  more  fully  the  pe- 
culiar reasoning  by  which  he  supports  his  agnostic  philos- 
ophy, I  should  not  do  justice  to  him  or  to  my  readers  if  I 
did  not  notice  it.     The  passage  is  the  following : 

Always  implying  terms  in  relation,  thought  implies  that  both 
terms  shall  be  more  or  less  defined  ;  and  as  fast  as  one  of  them  be- 
comes indefinite,  the  relation  also  becomes  indefinite,  and  thought 
becomes  indistinct.  Take  the  case  of  magnitudes.  I  think  of  an 
inch;  I  think  of  a  foot;  and  having  tolerably  definite  ideas  of  the 
two,  I  have  a  tolerably  definite  idea  of  the  relation  between  them. 
I  substitute  for  the  foot  a  mile ;  and  being  able  to  represent  a  mile 
much  less  definitely,  I  can  not  so  definitely  think  of  the  relation  be- 
tween an  inch  and  a  mile — can  not  distinguish  it  in  thought  from  the 
relation  between  an  inch  and  two  miles,  as  clearly  as  I  can  distin- 
guish in  thought  the  relation  between  an  inch  and  one  foot  from 
the  relation  between  an  inch  and  two  feet.  And  now,  if  I  endeavor 
to  think  of  the  relation  between  an  inch  and  the  240,000  miles 
from  here  to  the  moon,  or  the  relation  between  an  inch  and  the 
92,000,000  miles  from  here  to  the  son,  I  find  tliat  while  these  dis- 
tances, practically  inconceivable,  have  become  little  more  than 
numbers  to  which  I  frame  no  answering  ideas,  so  too  has  the  re- 
lation between  an  inch  and  either  of  them  become  practically  in- 
conceivable. Now  this  partial  failure  in  the  process  of  forming 
thought  relations,  which  happens  even  with  finite  magnitudes  when 
one  of  them  is  immense,  passes  into  complete  failure  when  one  of 
them  can  not  be  brought  within  any  limits.  The  relation  itself 
becomes  unrepresentable  at  the  same  time  that  one  of  its  terms 
becomes  unrepresentable.  Nevertheless,  in  this  case  it  is  to  be 
observed  that  the  almost  blank  form  of  relation  preserves  a  certain 


MR.  SPENCER'S  AGNOSTICISM.  259 

qualitative  character.  It  is  still  distinguishable  as  belonging  to  the 
consciousness  of  extensions,  not  to  the  consciousnesses  of  forces 
or  durations;  and  in  so  far  remains  a  vaguely  identifiable  relation. 
But  now  suppose  we  ask  what  happens  when  one  term  of  the  rela- 
tion has  not  simply  magnitude  having  no  known  limits,  and  dura- 
tion of  wliich  neitl*er  beginning  nor  end  is  cognizable,  but  is  also 
an  existence  not  to  be  defined?  In  other  words,  what  must  hap- 
pen if  one  term  of  the  relation  is  not  only  qualititatively  but  also 
qualitatively  unrepresentable?  Clearly  in  this  case  the  relation 
does  not  simply  cease  to  be  thinkable  except  as  a  relation  of  a  cer- 
tain class,  but  it  lapses  completely.  When  one  of  the  terms  be- 
comes wholly  unknowable,  the  law  of  thought  can  no  longer  be 
conformed  to ;  both  because  one  term  can  not  be  present,  and  be- 
cause relation  itself  can  not  be  framed.  ...  In  brief,  then,  to  Mr. 
Martineau's  objection  I  reply  that  the  insoluble  difficulties  he  indi- 
cates arise  here,  as  elsewhere,  when  thought  is  applied  to  that 
which  transcends  the  sphere  of  thought ;  and  that  just  as  when  we 
try  to  pass  beyond  phenomenal  manifestations  to  the  Ultimate  Re- 
ality manifested,  we  have  to  symbolize  it  out  of  such  materials  as 
the  phenomenal  manifestations  give  us;  so  we  have  simultaneously 
to  symbolize  the  connection  between  this  Ultimate  Reality  and  its 
manifestations,  as  somehow  allied  to  the  connections  among  the 
phenomenal  manifestations  themselves.  The  truth  Mr.  Martineau's 
criticism  adumbrates  is  that  the  law  of  thought  fails  where  the  ele- 
ments of  thought  fail ;  and  this  is  a  conclusion  quite  conformable 
to  the  general  view  I  defend.  Still  holding  the  validity  of  my  ar- 
gument against  Hamilton  and  Mansel,  that  in  pursuance  of  their 
own  principle  the  Relative  is  not  at  all  thinkable  as  such,  unless  in 
contradiction  to  some  existence  posited,  however  vaguely,  as  the 
other  term  of  a  relation,  conceived  however  indefinitely ;  it  is 
consistent  on  my  part  to  hold  that  in  this  effort  which  thought 
inevitably  makes  to  pass  beyond  its  sphere,  not  only  does  the 
product  of  thought  become  a  dim  symbol  of  a  product,  but  the 
process  of  thought  becomes  a  dim  symbol  of  a  process ;  and  hence 
any  predicament  inferable  from  the  law  of  thought  can  not  be 
asserted.* 


*  "  Essays,''  vol  iii,  pp.  293-296. 


260  CREATION  OR  EYOLUTION? 

In  judging  of  the  soundness  of  this  reasoning,  the  first 
thing  to  be  done  is  to  determine  what  we  are  thinking 
about  when  we  compare  the  finite  with  the  infinite,  or 
when,  to  put  it  as  Mr.  Spencer  does,  we  have  two  terms  of 
a  relation,  one  of  which  is  a  thing  open  to  the  observation 
of  our  senses,  and  the  other  of  which  lies  beyond  them. 
In  this  case,  does  all  thinkable  relation  lapse,  or  fade  into 
an  impossible  conception,  when  we  undertake  to  conceive 
of  that  which  lies  beyond  what  we  see  ?  Does  the  relation 
between  the  two  supposed  terms  cease  to  be  a  continuously 
existing  relation  ?  Or,  to  quote  Mr.  Spencer's  words,  is  it 
true  that  *' insoluble  difficulties  arise,  because  thought  is 
applied  to  that  which  is  beyond  the  sphere  of  thought "  ? 

We  must  be  careful  to  distinguish  between  the  **  insol- 
uble difficulties"  which  arise  out  of  the  imperfection  of 
language  adequate  to  give  a  formal  description  of  a  thing, 
and  which  may  lead  us  to  suppose  ourselves  involved  in 
contradictions,  and  the  "insoluble  difficulties"  which  may 
arise  out  of  the  impossibility  of  having  a  mental  repre- 
sentation of  that  thing.  The  latter  is  the  only  difficulty 
about  which  we  need  concern  ourselves  ;  and  the  best  way 
to  test  the  supposed  difficulty  as  an  insuperable  one  is  to 
take  one  of  the  illustrations  used  by  Mr.  Spencer — the  idea 
of  space.  We  measure  a  foot  or  a  mile  of  space,  and  then 
compare  it  with  the  idea  of  endless  or  (to  us)  immeasurable 
space.  Figures  afford  us  the  means  of  expressing  in  lan- 
guage a  certain  definite  number  of  miles  of  space,  but, 
beyond  the  highest  figures  of  which  we  have  definite  forms 
of  expression,  we  can  not  go  in  definite  descriptions  of 
space.  But  when  we  have  exhausted  all  the  expressions  of 
number  that  our  arithmetical  forms  of  expression  admit, 
does  it  follow  that  we  can  not  conceive  of  extension  beyond 
that  number  ?  On  the  contrary,  the  very  measure  which 
we  are  able  to  express  in  figures,  to  a  certain  extent,  in  re- 
gard both  to  space  and  time,  gives  us  the  idea  of  space  and 


TPwUE  THINKrSTG.  261 

time,  and  shows  us  that  there  must  be  an  extension  of  both 
beyond  and  forever  beyond  the  portion  of  either  which  lan- 
guage will  allow  us  definitely  to  describe.  This  to  us  im- 
measurable and  indescribable  extent  of  space  or  time  be- 
comes a  thinkable  idea,  because  we  are  all  the  while  thinking 
of  space  or  time,  whether  it  is  a  measurable  portion  of 
either,  or  an  immeasurable  and  endless  existence. 

Take  as  another  illustration  a  purely  moral  idea.  "We 
know  that  there  is  a  moral  quality  which  we  call  goodness  ; 
an  attribute  of  human  character  of  which  we  have  a  clear 
conception,  and  which  we  can  describe  because  it  is  mani- 
fested to  us  in  human  lives.  When  we  speak  of  the  moral 
phenomena  to  which  we  give  the  name  of  goodness,  or  vir- 
tue, all  mankind  know  what  is  meant.  But  human  virtue 
is  imperfect,  limited,  measurable.  It  may  be  idealized  into 
something  approaching  to  perfection,  but  the  ideal  charac- 
ter thus  drawn  must  fall  short  of  perfection  if  it  is  made 
consistent  with  human  nature.  But  from  human  character 
we  derive  the  idea  of  goodness  or  virtue  as  a  thinkable  idea. 
Is  the  idea  of  absolute  perfection  of  this  quality  any  less 
thinkable  ?  Absolute  perfection  of  moral  character  can  not 
be  described  by  a  definition  ;  but,  as  we  know  that  a  meas- 
urable goodness  which  we  can  describe  exists,  wherein  con- 
sists the  failure  or  lapse  of  a  thinkable  relation,  when  we 
reason  from  that  which  exists  in  a  measurable  degree  to 
that  which  transcends  all  degree  ?  We  are  all  the  while 
thinking  of  goodness  or  virtue,  whether  we  think  of  it  as 
limited  and  imperfect,  or  as  unlimited  and  perfect.  Take 
another  quality — power.  We  know  that  there  is  such  a 
quality  as  power,  wielded  by  human  beings,  and  guided  by 
their  will.  But  human  power  is  limited,  measurable,  and 
therefore  finite.  When  we  reason  from  the  finite  power  of 
man  to  the  idea  of  an  infinite  and  immeasurable  power 
held  and  wielded  by  another  being,  do  we  strive  to  conceive 
of  something  that  is  unthinkable  because  we  can  only  say 


262  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

that  the  power  of  that  other  being  is  without  limit  ?  We 
are  all  the  while  thinking  of  power,  of  the  quality  of  power, 
whether  we  think  of  it  as  measurable  or  immeasurable. 
All  qualities  and  all  faculties  which  are  manifested  to  us  in 
a  limited  degree,  when  we  conceive  of  them  as  unlimited 
and  without  degree,  become  proofs  that  what  exists  in  a 
measurable  and  limited  degree  may  exist  without  limitation 
and  without  degree.  Although  we  can  only  define  the 
finite,  the  infinite  is  not  the  less  a  subject  of  true  thinking, 
because,  whether  we  think  of  the  finite  or  the  infinite,  what 
we  are  all  the  time  thinking  about  is  the  quality  of  power, 
and  nothing  else.  In  the  one  case  it  is  limited,  in  the 
other  it  is  unlimited,  but  it  is  all  the  time  the  quality  itself 
of  which  we  are  thinking.* 

But  now  let  us  attend  a  little  more  closely  to  Mr.  Spen- 
cer's grand  objection  to  this  mode  of  thinking.  The 
reader  will  be  careful  to  note  that  what  he  needs  to  ascer- 
tain is,  whether  Mr.  Spencer's  agnostic  theory  is  really 
sound.  To  test  it,  he  must  inquire  just  where  the  sup- 
posed difficulty  lies.  Translated  into  other  language,  Mr. 
Spencer's  position  is  this  :  In  order  to  keep  within  the 
sphere  of  possible  thought,  there  must  be  a  definite  relation 
between  any  two  ideas,  which  must  not  lapse,  but  the  two 
ideas  must  be  equally  capable  of  mental  representation. 
When  one  term  of  the  relation  is  an  idea  capable  of  mental 
representation,  as  when  we  think  of  a  thing  cognizable  by 
our  senses,  and  the  other  term  of  the  relation  is  something 
that  lies  beyond  them,  the  law  of  thought,  according  to 
Mr.  Spencer,  can  no  longer  be  conformed  to  ;  the  relation 
lapses ;  the  latter  term  can  not  be  present  to  the  mind  ; 
we  pass  out  of  the  sphere  of  thought  into  that  which  can 
not  be  a  subject  of  thought,  the  unknown  and  the  unknow- 


*  For  the  answer  to  the  objection  that  we  thus  ascribe  anthropomorphic 
attributes  to  the  Supreme  Being,  see  infra. 


TRUE  THINKING.  263 

able.  What  takes  place  in  this  process  is  assumed  to  be 
this :  We  take  certain  phenomenal  manifestations  which 
we  are  able  to  observe  and  to  describe.  Out  of  the  materials 
which  these  phenomenal  manifestations  give  us,  we  "sym- 
bolize the  Ultimate  Reality."  We  do  this,  by  arguing 
from  the  phenomenal  manifestations  which  convince  us  of 
the  existence  of  a  being  whom  we  know  and  can  observe, 
to  the  existence  of  a  being  in  whom  we  "symbolize"  quali- 
ties and  faculties  which  the  phenomenal  manifestations 
show  us  to  belong  to  human  beings.  At  the  same  time  we 
represent  to  ourselves  by  the  same  symbolizing  process  a 
connection  between  the  Ultimate  Reality  and  its  manifes- 
tation, which  is  allied  to  the  connections  among  the  phe- 
nomenal manifestations  which  we  observe  in  man,  or  in 
nature.  In  other  words,  we  reason  from  what  we  see  and 
can  measure  and  describe,  to  that  which  we  can  not  see  or 
describe,  and  we  end  in  a  term  of  the  relation  which  can 
not  be  present  to  the  mind,  and  thus  no  thinkable  relation 
can  be  framed. 

Whatever  may  be  said  of  the  rational  force  of  the  evi- 
dence derived  from  phenomenal  manifestations  which  we 
can  observe  when  we  reason  about  other  phenomenal  mani- 
festations which  we  can  not  measure,  it  can  not  be  said 
that  we  have  reached  a  term  in  the  relation  that  is  beyond 
the  sphere  of  thought.  What  I  understand  Mr.  Spencer 
to  mean  when  he  speaks  of  "symbolizing"  out  of  the 
materials  which  the  phenomenal  manifestations  give  us, 
may  be  a  process  liable  to  error,  but  it  does  not  involve  or 
lead  to  the  "insoluble  difficulties"  that  are  supposed  to 
arise.  For  example,  when,  from  the  existence  and  power 
of  man,  a  being  whom  we  know,  and  whose  phenomenal 
manifestations  lead  us  to  a  knowledge  of  his  limited  facul- 
ties, we  reason  to  the  existence  of  a  being  whose  faculties 
are  boundless,  we  may  be  in  danger  of  conclusions  into 
which  imperfection  will  find  its  way ;  but  it  certainly  is 


264  CKEATTON  OR  EYOLTmON? 

not  true  that  in  thinking  of  unlimited  power  or  goodness, 
or  any  other  unlimited  quality,  we  transcend  the  sphere  of 
thought.  When  we  have  expressed  in  figures  the  greatest 
measurable  idea  of  space  that  can  be  so  expressed,  what  do 
we  "symbolize,"  when  we  say  that  beyond  that  measured 
space  there  stretches  a  space  that  we  can  not  measure,  and 
to  which  there  is  of  necessity  no  limit  ?  Does  a  thinkable 
relation  cease  to  exist,  because  one  of  the  terms  is  immeas- 
urable to  us  ?  As  soon  as  we  have  formed  an  idea  of  a 
measurable  portion  of  space,  we  necessarily  have  an  idea  of 
endless  and  immeasurable  space  ;  and  in  this  deduction  we 
have  employed  no  "symbol"  formed  out  of  the  materials 
which  the  measurable  manifestations  have  given  us.  We 
have  simply  reached  a  conclusion  that  is  inevitable.  We  are 
all  the  while  thinking  of  space,  whether  it  is  definite  space 
that  we  can  measure,  or  indefinite  space  that  we  can  not 
measure. 

When  the  moral  and  intellectual  qualities  of  men  con- 
stitute one  part  of  the  phenomenal  manifestations  which 
we  adopt  as  the  basis  of  reasoning  to  the  existence  of  God, 
we  are  in  danger  of  assigning  to  that  being  attributes  of 
character  which  would  be  far  from  perfection.  Nearly  all 
the  religions  that  have  existed,  and  of  which  we  have  much 
knowledge — ^perhaps  all  of  them  but  one — have  displayed 
more  or  less  of  this  tendency.  It  is  only  necessary  to  in- 
stance the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  for  there  are  parts  of  that 
narrative  in  which  the  Deity  is  represented  as  actuated  by 
something  very  much  like  human  passions  and  motives, 
and  these  representations  are  among  the  hardest  things  to 
be  reconciled  with  the  idea  that  those  books  were  inspired 
writings.  Every  one  knows  with  what  effect  these  passages 
of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  are  used  by  those  who  reject  both 
the  Old  and  the  New  Testaments  as  inspired  books.  But 
is  philosophy  therefore  to  shrink  from  the  use  of  materials 
with  which  the  world  is  filled,  and  which  lead  to  the  con- 


TRUE  THINKING.  265 

ception  of  a  being  of  infinite  faculties  and  perfect  good- 
ness ?  Grant  all  that  may  be  said  of  the  stupid  and  fatal 
errors  into  which  men  have  been  led  by  likening  the  Deity 
to  man  :  there  remains  a  vast  store-house  of  materials  on 
which  to  reason  to  the  existence  of  God,  which  philosophy 
can  not  afford  to  reject,  which  can  be  freed  from  the  peril 
that  has  often  attended  their  use,  and  which  involve  no 
*' symbolizing"  process  of  the  kind  which  Mr.  Spencer 
imagines. 

Let  us  again  translate  Mr.  Spencer's  language,  and  en- 
deavor to  analyze  his  position.  There  is,  he  says,  a  law  of 
thought,  which  requires  and  depends  upon  certain  elements 
of  thought.  By  ** thought"  he  means  a  conceivable  idea, 
or  one  which  the  mind  can  represent  to  itself.  By  the  ele- 
ments of  thought  he  means,  I  suppose,  the  data  which 
enable  us  to  have  an  idea  of  a  product.  The  process  of 
reaching  this  product  is  supposed  to  be  conducted  accord- 
ing to  a  law  which  requires  us  to  have  the  data  or  elements 
by  which  the  process  is  to  be  conducted.  For  example,  in 
the  process  of  reaching  an  idea  of  definite  space  as  a  prod- 
uct of  thought,  we  take  certain  data  or  elements,  by  con- 
ceiving of  space  as  divided  into  successive  portions  to  which 
we  give  the  name  of  feet  or  miles.  The  product  of  thought 
is  the  number  of  feet  or  miles  into  which  we  divide  the 
definite  space  of  which  we  form  an  idea.  In  this  process 
we  have  conformed  to  Mr.  Spencer's  law  of  thought,  be- 
cause we  have  data  or  elements  by  which  to  conduct  the 
process  and  reach  the  product. 

But  now,  says  Mr.  Spencer,  when  thought  undertakes 
to  have  as  its  product  the  idea  of  endless  space,  it  makes 
an  effort  to  pass  beyond  its  sphere  ;  the  elements  of  thought 
fail,  and  therefore  the  law  of  thought  fails  ;  the  product 
is  nothing  but  a  dim  symbol  of  a  product ;  the  process 
becomes  nothing  but  a  dim  symbol  of  a  process ;  and  no 
predicament,  that  is,  no  fact,  is  here  inferable  from  the 


266  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

law  of  thought  as  a  fact  or  predicament  that  can  be  asserted. 
But  what,  in  the  case  supposed,  is  the  fact  or  predicament 
that  is  asserted,  when  we  speak  or  think  of  endless  space, 
or  of  space  that  transcends  all  our  powers  of  measurement  ? 
Is  it  correct  to  say  that  the  law  of  thought  fails,  because 
we  can  not  express  endless  space  in  feet  or  miles  ?  Is  it 
true  that  we  have  only  "  symbolized  "  the  product  of  end- 
less space  out  of  the  data  or  elements  of  measurable  space  ? 
Here  it  is  necessary  to  inquire  what  the  learned  philosopher 
means  by  '*  symbolizing  "  a  product  or  a  process.  I  under- 
stand him  to  mean,  in  the  case  supposed,  that  whereas  in 
reference  to  the  idea  or  product  of  a  measurable  space  we 
have  certain  data  or  elements  out  of  which  to  form  that 
idea,  when  we  undertake  to  think  of  endless  space  we 
transfer  the  notion  of  a  measurable  space  to  that  of  which 
no  measure  can  be  predicated,  and  therefore  we  can  have 
no  conception  of  endless  space,  but  only  a  ''formless  con- 
sciousness of  the  inscrutable."  Let  us  see  if  this  is  sound. 
Take  as  a  convenient  idea  of  a  measurable  space  the 
92,000,000  miles  from  the  earth  to  the  sun,  and  lay  it  down 
on  paper.  If,  after  having  measured  this  space,  we  could 
transport  ourselves  to  the  sun,  we  could  extend  the  line  in 
the  same  direction  beyond  the  sun,  by  laying  down  a  fur- 
tjier  measurement  of  92,000,000  miles  from  the  sun  to  any 
object  that  we  could  observe  beyond  the  sun.  This  process 
we  could  repeat  indefinitely  and  forever,  if  we  could  be 
successively  removed  to  the  different  stages  at  each  point 
of  departure.  But  when  an  aggregate  of  such  multiplied 
measurements  had  been  reached  greater  than  could  be  ex- 
pressed in  figures,  we  should  still  have  the  intellectual  pow- 
er of  thinking  of  an  extension  of  space  indefinitely  beyond 
that  which  we  have  measured.  Nothing  would  have  failed 
us  but  the  power  of  expressing  in  figures  the  endless  extent 
of  space  which  lies  beyond  the  utmost  limit  that  we  can 
60  express. 


TRUE  THIisrKIN"a  267 

It  is  precisely  here,  as  I  suppose,  that  Mr.  Spencer's 
"symbolizing  process"  and  his  "symbolized  product" 
come  in.  We  have  taken  as  the  elements  of  thought  the 
idea  of  successive  measurements  of  space  ;  and  the  law  of 
thought  permits  us  to  have  as  a  definite  product  what- 
ever extent  of  space  can  be  marked  off  by  such  successive 
measurements.  But  when  we  undertake  to  have,  as  the 
product  of  thought,  a  consciousness,  or  conception,  of  end- 
less space,  we  have  merely  used  the  idea  of  a  definite  space 
as  a  "  symbol,"  or  simulacrum,  of  that  which  is  without 
form,  and  is  only  a  "formless  consciousness  of  the  inscru- 
table " — whatever  that  means. 

Let  us  see  what  has  happened.  The  power  of  measur- 
ing, or  describing  in  form,  a  definite  extent  of  space,  has 
given  us  an  idea  of  space.  The  product  of  our  thought  is 
extension  between  two  given  points.  Such  extensions  must 
be  capable  of  indefinite  multiplication,  although  we  can  not 
express  in  figures  an  indefinite  multiplicand.  The  product 
is  then  something  beyond  what  we  can  express  in  a  definite 
form ;  but  is  it  beyond  the  sphere  of  thought  ?  What  is 
it  ?  It  is  an  idea  which  we  deduce  by  a  strict  process  of 
reasoning,  and  to  which  we  do  not  need  to  give  and  can  not 
give  expression  in  figures.  The  process  of  reasoning  is  this  : 
Measurement  has  given  us  an  idea  of  space ;  our  faculty 
of  applying  measurement  is  limited ;  but  our  faculty  of 
conceiving  of  space  through  which  we  could  go  on  forever 
multiplying  such  measurements,  if  we  had  the  means,  is 
certainly  a  faculty  of  which  all  men  are  conscious  who  are 
accustomed  to  analyze  the  processes  of  thought.  In  this 
process  we  may  reach  that  which  in  one  sense  is  "  inscru- 
table." It  is  inscrutable,  inasmuch  as  we  can  not  under- 
stand how  eternity  of  space  or  time  came  to  exist.  Our 
experience  of  phenomena  enables  us  to  have  an  idea  of 
space  and  time,  and  from  the  fact  that  we  have  measured 

off  portions  of  space  or  time,  we  deduce  the  fact  that  there 
13 


268  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

must  be  an  eternity  of  both.  It  is  immaterial  whether  we 
call  this  a  "symbolizing"  process,  or  call  it  something  else. 
The  product  is  an  idea  at  which  we  arrive  by  a  strict  pro- 
cess of  reasoning.  Eternity  of  space  or  time  is  an  inscru- 
table idea,  when  we  attempt  to  inquire  how  it  came  to  be. 
That  it  exists,  is  an  idea  from  which  the  human  mind  can 
not  escape,  and  which  it  reaches  by  a  perfectly  sound  de- 
duction. We  are  all  the  while  thinking  of  space  or  time, 
whether  we  are  thinking  of  that  which  is  measurable,  or  of 
that  which  is  immeasurable. 

I  now  come  to  a  passage  in  Mr.  Spencer's  recent  article 
which  it  is  necessary  to  attempt  to  explain  to  the  unlearned 
reader,  and  to  bring  it,  if  possible,  within  the  reach  of 
ordinary  minds.  This  passage,  which  follows  in  his  recent 
article  immediately  after  his  quotation  from  his  "  Essays," 
is  the  following : 

Thus,  then,  criticisms  like  this  of  Mr.  Martineau,  often  recurring 
in  one  shape  or  other,  and  now  again  made  by  Mr.  Harrison,  do  not 
show  the  invalidity  of  my  argument,  but  once  more  show  the 
imbecility  of  human  intelligence  when  brought  to  bear  on  the  ulti- 
mate question.  Phenomenon  without  noumenon  is  unthinkable ; 
and  yet  noumenon  can  not  be  thought  of  in  the  true  sense  of  think- 
ing. We  are  at  once  obhged  to  be  conscious  of  a  reality  behind 
appearance,  and  yet  can  neither  bring  this  consciousness  of  reality 
into  any  shape,  nor  can  bring  into  any  shape  its  connection  with 
appearance.  The  forms  of  our  thought,  molded  on  experience  of 
phenomena,  as  well  as  the  connotations  of  our  words  formed  to  ex- 
press the  relations  of  phenomena,  involve  us  in  contradictions  when 
we  try  to  think  of  that  which  is  beyond  phenomena ;  and  yet  the 
existence  of  that  which  is  beyond  phenomena  is  a  necessary  datum 
alike  of  our  thoughts  and  our  words.  We  have  no  choice  but  to* 
accept  a  formless  consciousness  of  the  inscrutable. 

Some  definitions  must  now  be  given.  The  word  "phe- 
nomenon "  haa  become  naturalized  in  our  English  tongue. 
Derived  as  a  noun  from  the  Greek  verb  <f>aivofiai,  to  ap- 
pear,  it  means  anything  visible  ;  whatever  is  presented  to. 


PHENOMEIirON  AND  NOUMENON.  269 

the  eye  by  obserration  or  experiment,  or  wbat  is  discov- 
ered to  exist ;  as  the  phenomena  of  the  natural  world,  the 
phenomena  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  of  terrestrial  substances, 
the  phenomena  of  heat  and  color.*  In  this  application  the 
word  denotes  what  appears  to  us,  or  what  we  discover  by 
our  senses.  It  is  also  used,  in  the  plural,  more  loosely,  to 
denote  occurrences  or  things  which  we  observe  to  happen  ; 
as  when,  speaking  of  physical  occurrences,  we  mean  physi- 
cal facts  the  happening  of  which  we  observe.  Moral  phe- 
nomena, on  the  other  hand,  are  the  appearances  exhibited 
by  the  action  of  mind. 

The  word  noumenon  has  not  become  naturalized  in  our 
language,  and  did  not  exist  in  Greek,  f  It  can  convey  no 
intelligible  meaning  to  common  readers  without  tracing  its 
derivation,  and  when  it  is  analyzed  we  can  attribute  to  it 
no  meaning  but  a  purely  arbitrary  one,  even  if  we  can 
arrive  at  that  arbitrary  signification.  In  fact,  it  is  a  word 
made  by  and  for  the  school  of  Kant.  Its  first  syllable  is 
the  Greek  noun  voOs  or  v6o^,  which  corresponds  to  our 
English  word  thought  or  intelligence.  The  Greek  verb 
vo€a>,  to  thinh,  was  primarily  used  as  I  perceive  ;  the  act  of 
the  mind  in  seeing.  This  idea  was  distinct  from  ctSw, 
which  conveyed  the  plain  meaning  of  I  see.  But  so  subtile 
were  the  Greeks  in  their  use  of  words,  that  ctSw  was  some- 
times used  specifically  to  mean  to  see  with  the  mind's  eye, 
or,  as  we  sometimes  say,  to  realize,  or  to  have  a  mental 
perception  of.  In  the  Greek  use  of  the  two  words  vocw  and 
€tSo),  no  distinction   was  made  between  phenomenon  and 

*  Webster's  Dictionary,  "  Phenomenon." 

f  Our  other  American  lexicographer,  Worcester,  who  was  pretty  strict 
in  regard  to  the  words  which  he  admitted  into  the  English  language,  gives 
the  word  "  noumenon,"  but  he  was  careful  to  designate  its  arbitrary  use. 
His  definition  is  this : 

"  Noumenon,  n.  [Gr.  vovs^  the  mind.]  In  the  philosophy  of  Kant,  an 
object  in  itself,  not  relatively  to  us  ;  opposed  to  phenomenon.     Fleming.'''* 


270  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

noumenon.  To  a  cultiyated  Greek,  phenomenon  would 
mean  something  perceived,  and  noumenon,  if  he  had  pos- 
sessed the  word,  would  have  had  the  same  meaning.  He 
would  have  used  the  two  words  interchangeably,  to  express 
either  sight  by  the  visual  organs  or  mental  perception.  Mr. 
Spencer  uses  them  as  if  they  meant  different  things,  as  if 
phenomenon  were  something  different  from  noumenon. 
But  noumenon,  according  to  its  derivation  (for  it  is  coined 
as  the  participle  of  vo€<i>),  means  a  thing,  subject,  or  object, 
perceived  hy  the  mind.  The  root  idea  is  mind-action,  the 
verb  vo€o>  meaning  to  do  what  the  mind  does  in  apprehend- 
ing a  subject  or  object.  So  that  the  derivation  of  nou- 
menon does  not  help  us  to  understand  the  Kantian  or  Spen- 
cerian  use  of  the  word. 

As  this  use  of  the  word  is,  then,  purely  arbitrary,  we 
must  try  to  understand,  as  well  as  we  can,  what  this  arbi- 
trary meaning  is.  As  well  as  I  can  fathom  it,  in  contrast 
with  phenomenon,  the  meaning  is  that  phenomenon  is  some- 
thing that  we  see,  and  noumenon  is  the  ghost  or  double 
of  what  we  see.  We  see  a  thing  with  our  eyes  ;  but  our 
mind  does  not  see  it — it  perceives  its  ghostly  double.  This 
is  noumenon. 

Penetrating,  or  trying  to  penetrate,  a  little  further  into 
Mr.  Spencer's  meaning,  it  would  seem  that  when  he  says 
that  phenomenon  without  noumenon  is  unthinkable,  he 
means  that,  although  we  can  see  a  thing  with  our  corporeal 
eye,  we  can  not  think  of  it  without  the  mental  act  of  see- 
ing its  image  with  the  mind's  eye  ;  and  then  he  adds  that 
noumenon  can  not  be  thought  of  in  the  true  sense  of  think- 
ing, because  noumenon  is  an  abstraction  or  a  mere  ghost  of 
a  subject  or  an  object. 

What  is  all  this  but  a  kind  of  play  upon  words  ?  We 
are  so  constituted  that  the  impressions  which  a  thing  ex- 
ternal to  us  produces  upon  our  nerves  of  perception  are 
instantly  transmitted  to  the  brain,  and  the  mind  has  an  in- 


CONCEPTION  OF  ENDLESS  SPACE.  271 

stantaneoTis  perception  of  that  object.  The  phenomenon 
which  we  see  with  our  eyes,  or  become  sensible  of  by  touch, 
thus  becomes  a  thing  perceived  by  the  mind,  and  when  we 
think  of  it  we  do  not  think  of  its  ghost,  but  we  think  of 
the  thing  itself.  Did  Laura  Bridgman,  who  had  neither 
eye-sight  nor  hearing  nor  speech,  but  who  acquired  all  her 
ideas  of  external  objects  by  the  sense  of  touch,  conceive  of 
a  round  or  a  square,  a  rough  or  a  smooth  surface,  by  con- 
templating the  ghost  or  double  of  what  she  touched  ?  And 
had  she  no  thinking  in  the  true  sense  of  thinking,  because 
the  double,  or  imago  of  the  thing  which  she  touched — the 
so-called  noumenon — was  at  once  necessary  to  her  mental 
perception,  and  yet  could  not  be  thought  of  without  seeing 
the  object  by  the  corporeal  eye  ?  She  had  no  corporeal  eye 
in  which  there  was  any  vision.  All  her  mental  perceptions 
of  external  objects  were  acquired  by  the  sense  of  touch 
alone  ;  and  we  may  well  believe  that  she  did  not  need  the 
supposed  noumenon  to  give  her  an  idea  of  phenomenon. 
She  perceived  many  phenomena  by  the  simple  transmission 
to  her  brain,  along  her  nerves  of  touch,  of  the  impressions 
produced  upon  them  by  external  objects ;  and  there  is 
every  reason  to  believe  that  many  of  her  perceptions  were 
as  accurate  and  true  as  those  which  we  derive  from  all  our 
senses.  We  may  now  dismiss  Mr.  Spencer's  distinction 
between  phenomenon  and  noumenon  as  a  distinction  quite 
needless  for  the  elucidation  of  what  takes  place  in  think- 
ing of  that  which  is  behind  appearance,  and  may  proceed 
with  the  discussion  of  what  remains  of  the  passage  above 
quoted. 

At  the  risk  of  wearying  by  repetition,  I  will  again  resort 
to  the  illustration  before  employed,  and  will  again  describe 
how  we  reach  the  conception,  for  example,  of  endless  space. 
According  to  Mr.  Spencer,  space,  or  extension,  as  a  think- 
able idea,  or  a  subject  of  thought,  is  confined  to  a  measur- 
able extent  of  space.     This  is  the  phenomenon,  or  appear- 


272  CREATIOI^  OR  EVOLUTION? 

ance.  All  our  forms  of  thonght  are,  it  is  said,  molded  on 
our  experience  of  phenomena  that  are  measurable,  or  capa- 
ble of  being  definitely  described ;  and  the  connotations  of 
our  words  which  express  the  relations  of  phenomena  relate 
to  phenomena  that  we  measure,  or  see,  and  can  definitely 
describe.  Therefore,  we  can  not  think  of  a  reality  that  is 
behind  appearance ;  can  not  bring  the  consciousness  of 
such  a  reality  into  any  shape,  nor  bring  into  any  shape  its 
connection  with  appearance. 

If  mankind  are  neyer  to  think  of  that  which  is  behind 
appearance — can  never  think  of  a  reality  that  is  behind 
what  they  see — ^because  their  forms  of  thought  are  molded 
on  experiences  of  phenomena  that  they  see,  and  because 
the  connotations  of  their  words  express  the  relations  of 
those  phenomena  and  no  others,  a  yast  domain  of  thinking 
is  necessarily  closed  to  them.  This  is  not  the  experience  of 
our  minds.  Every  day  of  our  lives  we  go  on  in  search  of 
that  which  is  beyond  appearance,  and  we  find  it.  Take 
again,  for  example,  the  phenomena  of  a  measurable  portion 
of  space  or*  time.  What  appears  to  us  gives  an  idea  of 
space  and  time.  We  measure  as  great  a  portion  of  either 
as  our  forms  of  expression  admit  of  our  describing  by  defi- 
nite terms,  but  we  are  immediately  conscious  of  another 
reality,  an  endless  extension  or  duration,  because  we  are 
conscious  that  we  have  not  exhausted  and  can  not  exhaust, 
by  our  measurements  and  descriptions,  the  whole  possible 
existence  of  space  or  time.  This  new  reality  behind  ap- 
pearance is  just  as  truly  thinkable,  just  as  true  a  conscious- 
ness, as  is  the  measurable  portion  of  time  or  space  ;  for  it 
is  time  or  space  of  which  we  are  constantly  thinking, 
whether  it  is  an  extent  or  duration  which  we  can  describe 
in  words,  or  whether  we  can  only  say  that  it  is  extent  or 
duration  without  beginning  and  without  end.  Our  minds 
are  so  constituted  that  the  existence  which  is  manifested  to 
us  by  observable  phenomena  leads  us  to  go  behind  the  ap- 


AGNOSTICISM.  273 

pearance  in  search  of  another  reality  beyond  that  which  is 
manifested  by  the  phenomena  that  we  see.  All  that  is  in- 
scrutable about  this  other  reality  that  lies  behind  appear- 
ance is  that  we  can  not  understand  how  it  came  to  be,  any 
more  than  we  can  understand  how  the  phenomenon  which 
we  see  and  can  measure  and  describe  in  a  definite  form 
came  to  exist.  We  do  not  bring,  and  do  not  need  to  bring, 
this  other  reality  into  connection  with  appearance.  We 
first  have  an  idea  of  space  and  time  from  observable  and 
measurable  phenomena.  The  reality  of  extension  without 
limit,  and  duration  without  end,  follows  of  necessity,  by  a 
process  of  thought  which  we  can  not  escape. 

But  now  it  becomes  needful  to  answer  a  further  objection. 
I  have  said  that  we  are  all  the  while  thinking  of  space, 
whether  it  is  a  measurable  and  limited  or  an  immeasurable 
and  illimitable  space.  Mr.  Spencer,  anticipating  this  ob- 
vious statement,  admits  that  the  form  of  relation  between 
the  two  ideas,  although  "almost  blank,"  preserves  a  cer- 
tain qualitative  character ;  that  is,  it  is  of  the  quality  of 
space  of  which  we  think,  whether  it  is  measurable  or  im- 
measurable, and  therefore  it  remains  "a  vaguely  identifia- 
ble relation."  But  when,  in  place  of  one  of  the  terms  of 
the  relation  qualitatively  the  same  as  the  other,  we  substi- 
tute an  existence  that  can  not  be  defined,  and  is  therefore 
both  quantitatively  and  qualitatively  unrepresentable,  the 
relation,  he  asserts,  lapses  entirely ;  one  of  the  terms  be- 
comes wholly  ''unknowable." 

I  will  not  again  repeat  that  extension  or  magnitude 
having  no  known  limits  is  a  thinkable  term,  because  the 
subject  of  thought  is  the  quality  of  extension  or  magnitude ; 
quantity  not  being  essential  to  the  idea  of  extension  or 
magnitude.  But  I  will  pass  to  the  idea  of  an  existence 
which  can  not  be  defined.  I  suppose  that  by  an  existence 
is  meant  a  being.  If  we  undertake  to  think  of  a  being 
whose  quality  we  do  not  know  to  be  the  same  as  the  quality 


274  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

of  another  being  whom  we  do  know,  and  the  quantity  of 
whose  powers  and  faculties  we  can  not  measure,  we  pro- 
pose, says  Mr.  Spencer,  a  term  of  impossible  thought,  be- 
cause the  law  of  thought  can  not  be  conformed  to ;  the 
term  can  not  be  present  to  the  mind,  and  no  thinkable  re- 
lation can  be  framed.  Let  this  supposed  difficulty  be  tested 
by  a  plain  inquiry  into  that  which  we  undertake  to  make 
the  subject  of 'thought  when  we  think  of  a  being  who  is 
said  to  be  "unknowable." 

"Agnosticism"  is  a  doctrine  which  eludes  a  definite 
grasp.  I  have  seen  it  defined  by  one  of  its  most  distin- 
guished professors  in  this  way :  "  Agnosticism  is  of  the 
essence  of  science,  whether  ancient  or  modern.  It  simply 
means  that  a  man  shall  not  say  he  knows  or  believes  that 
which  he  has  no  scientific  grounds  for  professing  to  know 
or  believe.  .  .  .  Agnosticism  simply  says  that  we  know 
nothing  of  what  may  be  beyond  phenomena."*  Mankind 
are  apt  to  be  rather  practical  in  their  habits  of  thinking: 
experience  teaches  them  that  there  is  a  well-founded  dis- 
tinction between  knowledge  and  belief,  when  it  comes  to 
be  a  question  of  asserting  the  one  or  the  other,  f  They 
find,  too,  by  experience  that,  in  regard  to  what  they  speak 
of  when  they  say  that  they  know  a  thing,  there  is  a  dis- 
tinction to  be  observed  in  respect  to  the  means  of  knowl- 
edge.   No  one  hesitates  to  say  that  he  knows  there  was 


*  Prof.  Huxley,  who  claims  a  sort  of  patent  right  or  priority  of  inven- 
tion in  the  term  and  doctrine  "  agnosticism." 

f  "  There  are  some  things  I  know  and  some  things  I  believe,"  said  the 
Syrian ;  "  I  know  that  I  have  a  soul,  and  I  believe  that  it  is  immortal,"  .  .  . 

"  I  wish  I  could  assure  myself  of  the  personality  of  the  Creator,"  said 
Lothair ;  "  I  cling  to  that,  but  they  say  it  is  unphilosophical ! "  "  In  what 
sense,"  asked  the  Syrian,  "is  it  more  unphilosophical  to  believe  in  a 
personal  God,  omnipotent  and  omniscient,  than  in  natural  forces,  uncon- 
scious and  irresistible  ?  Is  it  unphilosophical  to  combine  power  with  intel- 
ligence ? ''— Disraeli's  "  Lothair:^ 


AGNOSTICISM.  275 

such  a  man  as  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  although  he  never 
saw  him,  and  although  our  knowledge  of  him  is  now  de- 
rived from  hearsay.  But  when  we  speak  of  knowing  that  a 
certain  living  person  was  at  a  certain  spot  on  a  certain  day, 
we  become  immediately  aware  that  in  order  to  justify  the 
assertion  we  or  some  one  ought  to  have  seen  the  person  at 
the  time  and  place,  especially  if  anything  important  de- 
pends upon  the  assertion.  There  are  a  great  many  things 
that  we  say  we  know  without  scientific  or  other  rigorous 
proof,  and  there  are  a  great  many  other  things  which  we 
do  not  say  that  we  know  without  the  kind  of  proof  which 
is  required.  All  our  actions  in  life  proceed  upon  this  dis- 
tinction, and  we  could  not  live  in  this  world  with  any  com- 
fort if  we  did  not  act  upon  the  assumption  that  we  know 
things  of  which  we  have  no  scientific  proof. 

A  very  clever  ;ew  d' esprit  went  the  rounds  of  the  peri- 
odical press  some  time  ago,  in  which  a  well-bom  and  highly 
educated  young  agnostic  was  represented  as  losing  his  birth- 
right, his  fiancee^  and  all  his  prospects  in  life,  because  he 
demanded  rigorous  proof  of  everything  that  affected  him. 
As  he  would  not  admit  that  he  was  the  son  of  his  own 
parents,  without  having  better  proof  of  it  than  their  as- 
sertion, he  was  turned  out-of-doors  and  disinherited.  He 
would  not  accept  the  bloom  on  the  cheek  of  his  mistress  as 
natural  unless  she  gave  him  her  word  that  she  did  not 
paint ;  and  he  would  not  admit  that  they  loved  each  other 
without  some  better  proof  than  their  mutual  feelings, 
about  which  they  might  be  mistaken.  The  young  lady 
indignantly  dismissed  him,  but  he  consoled  himself  as  a 
martyr  to  the  truth  of  agnosticism.  He  became  tutor  to 
the  son  of  a  nobleman,  whose  belief  in  the  boy's  extraordi- 
nary talents,  although  justified  by  his  progress  in  his  stud- 
ies, the  tutor  would  not  admit  had  the  requisite  proof. 
He  propounded  his  denial  of  what  the  father  had  no  proper 
grounds  for  maintaining,  in  an  offensive  way,  and  of  course 


276  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

he  lost  his  place.  He  retired  to  a  sort  of  agnostic  brother- 
hood, glorying  in  his  adhesion  to  truth.  Some  of  his  com- 
panions remained  long  enough  in  the  brotherhood  to  find 
out  that  they  were  making  fools  of  themselves,  and  at  the 
first  opportunity  for  acting  on  the  ordinary  grounds  of 
knowing  a  fact  without  rigorous  demonstration  of  it  they 
left  him  in  solitude,  went  into  the  world,  and  achieved 
success. 

"A  man  shall  not  say  he  knows  or  believes  that  which 
he  has  no  scientific  grounds  for  professing  to  know  or  be- 
lieve." By  "scientific  grounds,"  I  presume  is  meant,  in 
the  case  of  a  fact  or  occurrence,  proper  proof  of  the  fact 
or  occurrence.  This  varies  with  the  nature  of  the  thing 
which  one  professes  to  know.  We  constantly  act  upon 
proofs  which  do  not  amount  to  demonstration,  and  there 
could  be  no  practical  enjoyment  of  our  lives  and  no  safety 
if  we  did  not.  If  a  government  were  to  receive  informa- 
tion that  a  foreign  army  was  on  the  border  of  the  country 
and  about  to  invade  it,  and  the  information  fell  short  of 
being  the  testimony  of  eye-witnesses,  what  would  be  thought 
of  the  rulers  if  they  were  to  fold  their  hands  and  say  that 
they  did  not  know  the  fact  because  they  had  no  "  scientific 
grounds  for  professing  to  know  it "  ?  On  the  other  hand, 
if  in  a  court  of  justice  the  question  to  be  determined  were 
the  presence  of  an  individual  at  a  certain  place  and  at  a 
certain  time,  the  established  rules  of  evidence  require  cer- 
tain kinds  of  proof  of  the  fact. 

Belief,  however,  is  a  conviction  of  something  which  may 
or  may  not  require  what  are  called  "scientific  grounds" 
before  we  can  be  permitted  to  profess  that  we  believe.  It 
depends  upon  the  thing  which  we  profess  to  believe,  and 
upon  the  grounds  on  which  we  rest  the  belief,  whether  we 
have  or  have  not  safe  and  sufficient  means  of  belief.  Be- 
lief in  the  law  of  gravitation  as  a  force  operating  through- 
out the  universe  is  arrived  at  as  a  deduction  from  scientific 


REALITY  BEHIND  APPEARANCE.  277 

data.  Belief  in  an  existence  beyond  phenomena,  in  a  be- 
ing who  is  the  producing  agent  of  the  phenomena,  depends 
upon  a  great  yariety  of  grounds,  some  of  which  are  scien- 
tific data  and  some  of  which  are  the  elements  of  moral 
reasoning.  We  may  not  say  that  we  ^*know"  that  God  or 
any  other  supernatural  being  exists,  but  we  may  say  that  we 
** believe"  in  his  existence.  Here  knowledge  is  one  thing  ; 
belief  is  another.  Knowledge  of  the  existence  of  God,  like 
knowledge  of  the  existence  of  any  other  being,  might  come 
to  us  through  the  testimony  of  a  competent  witness  com- 
missioned and  authorized  to  inform  us.  Belief  in  the  exist- 
ence of  God  may  be  founded  on  many  and  various  grounds 
without  the  direct  testimony  of  the  competent  witness ; 
and  these  grounds  may  be  perfectly  satisfactory  without 
being  mathematical  or  scientific  demonstration.  It  is  a  very 
remarkable  fact  that  some  of  the  most  eminent  of  the 
school  of  agnosticism  profess  to  have,  and  probably  have, 
the  most  undoubting  faith  in  the  theory  and  actual  occur- 
rence of  animal  evolution,  without  any  data,  scientific  or 
other,  which  can  enable  other  men  to  arrive  at  the  same 
conviction,  whatever  may  be  the  character  of  the  supposed 
proofs.  They  certainly  have  no  grounds  for  professing  to 
know  that  an  evolution  of  species  out  of  species  has  ever 
taken  place ;  and  the  grounds  of  their  belief  in  the  fact, 
whether  denominated  "  scientific  "  or  called  something  else, 
do  not  satisfy  the  rules  of  belief  on  which  mankind  must 
act,  in  accordance  with  their  mental  and  moral  constitu- 
tions ;  and  this  belief  does  not  rise  any  higher  in  the  scale 
of  moral  probabilities  than  the  belief  in  special  creations, 
nor  does  it  rise  so  high.     But  to  return  to  Mr.  Spencer. 

If  we  did  not  act  upon  the  process  of  thinking  of  an- 
other reality  than  that  which  appearance  gives,  act  upon 
it  fearlessly  and  by  a  mode  of  thinking  to  which  we  can 
safely  trust  ourselves,  science  would  stand  still,  there  would 
be  no  progress  in  physics,  discoveries  would  cease,  there 


278  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

would  be  no  improyement  in  morals,  the  world  would  re- 
main stationary.  What  did  Columbus  do,  when,  going 
behind  the  phenomena  that  made  the  earth  appear  to  be  a 
flat  surface,  he  thought  of  it  as  a  sphere  ?  Did  he  break 
the  law  of  thought  ?  He  formed  an  idea  of  a  reality  be- 
hind appearance,  not  by  employing  the  phenomenal  mani- 
festations to  help  him  to  the  new  conception,  but  by  going 
away  from  them  in  search  of  a  reality  that  lay  behind 
them,  and  which  they  seemed  to  contradict.  This  concep- 
tion of  a  sphere  as  the  reality  of  the  earth's  condition 
proved  to  be  the  truth.  He  did  not  bring  it,  and  did  not 
need  to  bring  it,  into  connection  with  appearance.  He  did 
not  use,  and  did  not  need  to  use,  the  relations  of  the  visible 
phenomena  to  help  him  to  attain  his  conception  of  a  spheri- 
cal form  of  the  earth.     He  contradicted  them  all. 

Did  all  the  moral  lawgivers  who  have  reformed  the 
world  break  the  law  of  thought,  when,  going  behind  the 
phenomena  of  human  conduct,  with  their  relations  point- 
ing to  one  idea  of  right  and  wrong,  they  conceived  the  idea 
of  a  new  and  a  better  rule  of  life  ?  When  it  was  said,  in 
place  of  the  old  law  of  an  eye  for  an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a 
tooth,  "  Love  your  enemies  and  pray  for  those  who  persecute 
you " — when  for  the  old  rule  of  revenge  there  was  substi- 
tuted forgiveness  of  injuries — something  was  inculcated 
that  contradicted  all  the  appearances  of  the  social  phe- 
nomena, and  that  lay  beyond  them.  Did  the  conscious- 
ness of  this  new  reality  become  *'  a  formless  consciousness 
of  the  inscrutable"  ?  What  is  there  about  it  that  is  in- 
scrutable ?  There  is  nothing  inscrutable  about  it,  or  in  the 
consciousness  of  it,  excepting  the  mode  in  which  the  being 
who  promulgated  it  came  to  exist.  The  idea  of  forgiveness 
is  clearly  within  the  compass  of  human  thought  and  of 
human  endeavor. 

When  we  are  in  the  process  of  making  a  new  physical 
discovery,  or  of  forming  a  new  rule  of  moral  action,  we 


REALITY  BEHIND  APPEARANCE.  279 

work  away  from  the  materials  which  the  phenomenal 
manifestations  give  us,  to  a  new  conception.  We  become 
conscious  of  a  new  reality  behind  appearance,  and  of  an 
existence  beyond  the  relations  of  the  phenomena  with  which 
we  have  heretofore  been  familiar.  It  is  to  this  striving  after 
realities  behind  appearances — striving  by  an  entirely  true 
process  of  thinking — that  the  world  owes  its  progress. 

When  the  phenomenal  manifestations  of  an  intellectual 
and  moral  nature  in  man  have  given  us  the  idea  of  an  ex- 
istence of  an  intellectual  and  moral  being  as  a  reality  of 
which  we  become  conscious,  what  is  to  prevent  us  from 
thinking  of  another  intellectual  and  moral  being  as  a  real- 
ity, with  faculties  and  powers  immeasurably  superior  to 
ours?  It  is  true  that  the  phenomenal  manifestations  of 
man's  intellectual  and  moral  nature  give  us  an  idea  of  a 
being  of  very  limited  faculties  and  very  imperfect  moral 
qualities.  But  what  is  the  "insoluble  difiBculty"  in  which 
we  become  involved,  when  we  think  of  a  being  whose  facul- 
ties are  boundless,  and  whose  moral  nature  is  perfect  ? 
Does  the  '*  insoluble  difficulty ''  consist  in  the  impossibility 
of  thinking  of  that  which  transcends  all  our  powers  of 
measurement  ?  All  that  we  have  done,  in  the  case  of  man, 
is  to  have  a  consciousness  of  a  being  whose  phenomenal' 
manifestations  evince  the  existence  of  an  intellectual  and 
moral  nature.  He  happens  to  be  a  being  of  very  limited 
faculties  and  very  imperfect  moral  characteristics.  WTiat 
prevents  us  from  thinking,  in  the  true  sense  of  thinking,  of 
another  being,  whose  powers  are  without  limit,  and  whose 
moral  nature  is  perfect  ?  Is  it  said  that  we  can  not  bring 
into  any  shape  the  idea  of  unlimited  power  or  of  perfect 
goodness,  or  bring  into  any  shape  its  connection  with  ap- 
pearance, because  all  our  ideas  of  power  and  goodness,  all 
our  forms  of  thought  and  expression,  are  molded  on  ex- 
periences of  limited  power  and  imperfect  goodness  ?  The 
truth  is  that  we  do  not  and  need  not  strive  to  bring  into 


280  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

connection  with  appearance  the  idea  of  any  quality  which 
we  conceive  of  as  unlimited.  What  we  derive  from  the 
phenomenal  manifestations  of  human  power  and  goodness 
is  a  consciousness  of  the  qualities  of  power  and  goodness. 
It  is  perfectly  correct  thinking  to  reason  that  these  quali- 
ties, whose  phenomenal  manifestations,  in  the  case  of  man, 
show  that  in  him  they  exist  only  in  a  limited  degree,  may 
exist  in  another  being  in  unlimited  perfection  and  without 
degree.  Our  minds  are  so  constituted  that  we  reason  from 
the  finite  to  the  infinite,  by  observing  that  one  class  of 
phenomena  evince  the  existence  of  the  finite  and  another 
class  of  phenomena  evince  the  existence  of  the  infinite. 

When,  therefore,  we  pass  from  the  phenomenal  mani- 
festations of  human  power  and  goodness,  we  come  into  the 
presence  of  other  phenomena  which  we  know  could  not  be 
and  were  not  produced  by  such  a  limited  and  imperfect 
being  as  man,  but  which  must  yet  have  had  an  author,  a 
maker,  an  originator,  a  creator.  We  thus  contemplate  and 
investigate  facts  which  show  that  the  phenomena  were  the 
products  of  a  skill,  wisdom,  and  power  that  transcend  all 
measurement.  Is  it  said  that  the  phenomena  of  nature, 
stupendous  and  varied  and  minute  and  wonderful  as  they 
are,  evince  only  that  a  certain  degree  of  power  and  wisdom 
was  exerted  in  their  production,  even  if  their  production  is 
attributed  to  a  being  competent  to  bring  them  about  ? 
And  therefore  that  the  idea  of  a  being  of  unlimited  facul- 
ties and  perfect  goodness  is  as  far  as  ever  from  our  reach 
by  any  true  process  of  thought  ?  This  assumption  begs 
something  that  should  not  be  taken  for  granted.  It  as- 
sumes that  the  production  of  the  phenomena  of  nature 
does  not  evince  unlimited  power  and  perfect  goodness  ;  did 
not  call  for  the  existence  of  boundless  faculties  and  inex- 
haustible benevolence  ;  involved  only  a  degree  of  such  qual- 
ities, although  a  vastly  superior  degree  to  that  possessed 
by  us.     The  correctness  of  this  assumption  depends  upon 


DEITY  UlfLIMITED.  281 

the  force  of  the  evidence  which  nature  affords  of  the  char- 
acter of  the  Deity.  It  is  an  assumption  which  has  led  to 
enormous  errors — errors  of  conception  and  belief  which 
impute  to  the  Supreme  Being  only  a  superior  degree  of 
power  and  wisdom,  greater  than  our  own,  but  still  limited 
and  imperfect,  liable  to  error,  and  acting  in  modes  which 
distress  us  with  contradictions  and  inconsistencies. 

It  may  without  rashness  be  asserted  that  the  phenomena 
of  the  universe  could  not  have  been  produced  by  a  power 
and  wisdom  that  were  subject  to  any  limitations.  While 
all  the  researches  of  science,  from  the  first  beginnings  of 
human  observation  to  the  present  moment,  show  that  in 
the  production  of  the  phenomena  of  nature  there  has  been 
exerted  a  certain  amount  of  power  and  wisdom,  they  also 
show  that  it  is  an  amount  which  we  can  not  measure  ;  that 
there  is,  moreover,  a  power  and  wisdom  that  have  not  been 
exhausted  ;  that  the  reserved  force  and  skill  and  benevo- 
lence are  without  limit.  For,  in  every  successive  new  dis- 
covery that  we  make,  in  every  new  revelation  of  the  power 
and  goodness  which  our  investigations  bring  forth,  we  con- 
tinuously reach  proofs  of  an  endless  capacity,  an  inexhaust- 
ible variety  of  methods  and  of  products.  So  that,  if  we  con- 
ceive of  the  whole  human  race,  with  all  its  accumulated 
knowledge,  as  ending  at  last  in  one  individual  possessed  of 
all  that  has  been  learned  on  earth,  and  imagine  him  to  be 
then  translated  to  another  state  of  existence,  with  all  his  fac- 
ulties of  observation  and  study  preserved,  and  new  fields  of 
inquiry  to  be  opened  to  him,  his  experience  on  earth  would 
lead  him  to  expect  to  find,  and  we  must  believe  that  in  his 
new  experience  he  will  find,  that  the  physical  and  the  moral 
phenomena  of  the  universe  are  an  inexhaustible  study ; 
that  search  and  discovery  must  go  on  forever ;  and  that 
forever  new  revelations  of  power  and  goodness  will  be  made 
to  the  perceptions  whose  training  began  in  a  very  limited 
sphere.     His  experience  in  that  limited  sphere  has  taught 


282  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

him  that  there  was  no  end  to  the  discoveries  which  were 
here  partially  within  his  reach.  His  experience  in  the  new 
sphere  will  he  a  continuation  of  his  experience  in  the  old 
one  ;  for  there  is  a  law  by  which  we  judge  of  the  future  by 
the  past.  This  law  is  one  of  the  conditions  of  our  intel- 
lectual existence ;  an  inevitable  habit  of  our  minds  ;  im- 
posed upon  us  by  an  inexorable  hut  familiar  authority. 
Our  experience  in  this  life  has  taught  us  that,  in  the  inves- 
tigation of  the  phenomena  of  nature  that  are  open  to  our 
observation  here,  we  have  never  reached  the  end  of  pos- 
sible discovery  ;  that  every  fresh  discovery  has  evinced  that 
there  are  still  new  things  to  be  learned,  new  manifestations 
of  power  to  be  revealed,  new  products  and  new  methods  to 
be  seen.  However  long  we  may  suppose  the  human  race  to 
exist  on  earth  and  its  researches  to  be  prosecuted  here,  we 
must  suppose  an  endless  accumulation  of  knowledge  here- 
after, because  the  law  which  compels  us  to  judge  of  the 
future  by  the  past  obliges  us  to  acce]Dt  as  the  fruition  of 
the  future  that  which  has  been  the  fruition  of  the  past.* 

Is  there  in  this  any  violation  of  the  true  law  of  thought  ? 
Does  the  relation  between  our  past  experience  and  the  ex- 
perience which  we  forecast  for  the  future  fade  into  a  dim 
symbol  of  a  relation  ?  On  the  contrary,  both  are  equally 
capable  of  mental  representation  ;  for  we  are  mentally  so 


*  The  practice  of  judging  of  the  future  by  the  past  is  sometimes  treated 
as  if  it  were  a  mere  habit  of  the  uncultivated  and  undisciplined  part  of 
mankind — a  kind  of  mental  weakness.  Undoubtedly,  our  past  experience 
is  not  always  an  infallible  guide  to  what  is  to  be  our  experience  in  the  fu- 
ture. We  often  have  to  correct  our  past  experience,  by  carefully  separat- 
ing the  accidental  from  the  essential ;  by  more  comprehensive  analysis  of 
the  facts  which  constitute  our  former  experience.  But  when  we  have  full, 
comprehensive,  and  accurate  views  of  that  which  has  happened  to  us  here- 
tofore, our  beliefs  in  what  is  to  happen  to  us  hereafter  are  not  only  attained 
by  a  safe  process  of  reasoning,  but  that  process  is  imposed  upon  us  by  a 
law  of  our  mental  constitution. 


THE  ULTIMATE  QUESTION.  283 

constituted  that  the  consciousness  of  what  has  happened  to 
us  in  the  past — the  unending  succession  of  new  discoyeries, 
the  constant  accumulation  of  knowledge,  which  we  haye 
experienced  here — giyes  us  the  conception  of  the  same  end- 
less progress  hereafter,  compels  us  to  belieye  in  it,  and  ena- 
bles us  to  grasp  it  as  a  product  of  true  thought. 

Mr.  Spencer  has  much  to  say  of  "the  imbecility  of 
human  intelligence  when  brought  to  bear  on  the  ultimate 
question."  What  is  the  ultimate  question  ?  The  ultimate 
question  with  which  science  and  philosophy  are  concerned 
is  the  existence  of  the  Supreme  Being.  It  is  of  the  utmost 
consequence  for  us  to  understand  wherein  consists  the  im- 
becility of  human  intelligence  when  brought  to  bear  upon 
this  question  of  the  existence  of  God.  How  does  our  im- 
becility manifest  itself  ?  What  is  the  point  beyond  which 
thought  can  not  go  ?  We  become  conscious  of  the  exist- 
ence of  the  being  called  man,  because,  from  the  phenomena 
which  we  know  that  he  produces  by  the  exercise  of  his  will 
and  power,  and  which  we  know  must  haye  had  an  author  and 
producer,  we  deduce  an  existence  beyond  the  phenomena, 
an  actor  in  their  production.  What  more,  or  what  that  is 
different,  do  we  do  or  undertake  to  do,  when,  from  the 
phenomena  of  nature  which  we  know  that  man  did  not 
produce,  we  think  of  another  existence  beyond  the  phenom- 
ena ?  In  both  cases,  we  study  the  phenomena  by  our 
senses  and  powers  of  obseryation  ;  in  both  cases  we  reason 
that  there  is  an  actor  who  produces  the  phenomena ;  yet 
the  existence  of  the  actor  who  produces  the  phenomena  is 
inscrutable  in  the  case  of  the  Deity  in  the  same  sense  and 
for  the  same  reason  that  it  is  inscrutable  in  the  case  of  man. 
How  the  human  mind  came  to  exist,  by  what  process  it  was 
made  to  exist,  by  what  means  it  was  created,  what  was  the 
genesis  of  the  human  intellect,  is  just  as  inscrutable,  no 
more  and  no  less  so,  as  the  mode  in  which  the  Deity  came 
to  exist.     In  both  cases  the  existence  of  a  being  is  what  we 


284  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

think  of ;  and  when  we  think  of  either  being  we  think 
of  that  which  is  beyond  phenomena  but  which  we  deduce 
from  phenomena.  In  neither  case  do  we  *'  accept  a  formless 
consciousness  of  the  inscrutable  " ;  for  what  we  accept  is 
the  consciousness  of  a  being,  and  it  is  not  a  consciousness  of 
the  mode  in  which  he  came  to  exist.  The  latter  conscious- 
ness is  the  inscrutable  problem.  The  existence  is  what  we 
think  of,  and  we  think  of  it  by  a  perfectly  true  process  of 
thought,  deducing  it  from  the  simple  truth  that  the  phe- 
nomena must  have  had  an  actor  in  their  production.  We 
do  not  undertake  to  think  of  the  process  by  which  man 
was  created,  or  of  the  mode  in  which  that  other  existence 
came  to  be  without  beginning  and  without  end. 

I  have  thus  discriminated  between  what  we  do  and  what 
we  do  not  think  of,  when  we  think  of  an  existence  beyond 
phenomena,  but  which  we  deduce  from  phenomena.  This 
is  a  most  necessary  discrimination  ;  for,  in  thinking  of  the 
existence,  we  do  not.  try  to  think  how  it  came  to  be  an  ex- 
istence. We  think  only  of  the  existence  ;  and  we  deduce 
it  from  our  observation  and  study  of  phenomena,  which 
teach  us  that  they  must  have  had  an  actor,  an  author,  a 
producer,  and  that  they  did  not  produce  or  create  them- 
selves. 

It  remains  for  me  to  advert  to  Mr.  Spencer's  theory  of 
the  origin  of  the  religious  consciousness,  or  the  origin  of 
the  idea  of  supernatural  beings,  and  hence  of  one  highest 
supernatural  being.  This  is  his  ghost-theory.  He  has  re- 
cently told  us  that  in  his  "Descriptive  Sociology" — a 
work  commenced  in  1867,  and  which  preceded  his  "  Prin- 
ciples of  Sociology"  (written  in  1874) — he  caused  to  be 
gathered  adequate  materials  for  generalization,  consisting 
of  a  great  number  of  excerpts  from  the  writings  of  travelers 
and  historians  who  have  given  accounts  of  the  religious  be- 
liefs of  the  uncivilized  races.  He  numbers  697  of  these 
extracts  which  refer  to  the  ghost- theory,  and  only  87  which 


MR.  SPENCER'S  GHOST-THEORY.  285 

refer  to  fetichism.  This  great  ratio  of  eight  to  one  he  con- 
siders overwhelming  proof  that  the  ghost-theory,  as  opposed 
to  fetichism,  is  sustained  by  the  beHefs  of  a  vast  majority 
of  the  uncivilized  races.  What  if  it  is  ?  What  is  the 
ghost-theory,  and  what  is  fetichism,  as  the  chief  source  and 
origin  of  religion  ?  Mr.  Spencer,  in  his  recent  article,  ex- 
plains fetichism  as  most  persons  understand  it,  namely, 
the  worship  of  inanimate  objects,  or  belief  in  their  super- 
natural powers.  The  ghost-theory,  which  his  697  extracts 
illustrate,  is  "the  belief  in  a  wandering  double,  which  goes 
away  during  sleep,  or  fainting,  and  deserts  the  body  for  a 
longer  period  at  death  ;  a  double  which  can  enter  and  pos- 
sess other  persons,  causing  disease,  epilepsy,  insanity,  etc., 
which  gives  rise  to  ideas  of  spirits,  demons,  etc. ,  and  which 
originates  propitiation  and  worship  of  ghosts."*  Further 
on,  he  reiterates  his  ghost-theory  as  the  origin  of  religious 
beliefs,  and  explains  it  thus  : 

Setting  out  with  the  statement  that  "unlike  the  ordinary  con- 
sciousness, the  religious  consciousness  is  concerned  with  that  which 
lies  beyond  the  sphere  of  sense,"  I  went  on  to  show  that  the  rise  of 
this  consciousness  begins  among  primitive  men  with  the  belief  in  a 
double  belonging  to  each  individual,  which,  capable  of  wandering 
away  from  him  during  life,  becomes  his  ghost  or  spirit  after  death ; 
and  that  from  this  idea  of  a  being  eventually  distinguished  as  super- 
natural, there  develop,  in  course  of  time,  the  ideas  of  supernatural 
beings  of  all  orders  up  to  the  highest.  Mr.  Harrison  has  alleged  that 
the  primitive  religion  is  not  belief  in  and  propitiation  of  the  ghost, 
but  is  worship  of  "  physical  objects  treated  frankly  as  physical  ob- 
jects "  (p.  498).  That  he  has  disproved  the  one  view  and  proved 
the  other,  no  one  will,  I  think,  assert.  Contrariwise,  he  has  given 
occasion  for  me  to  cite  weighty  authorities  against  him. 

Next  it  was  contended  that  in  the  assemblage  of  supernatural 
beings  thus  originating  in  each  tribe,  some,  derived  from  chiefs, 
were  superior  to  others;  and  that,  as  the  compounding  and  recom- 
pounding  of  tribes  gave  origin  to  societies  having  social  grades  and 

*  "Nineteenth  Century"  for  November,  1884,  p.  827. 


286  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

mlers  of  different  orders,  there  resulted  that  conception  of  a  hier- 
archy of  ghosts  or  gods  which  polytheism  shows  us.  Further  it 
was  argued  that  while,  with  the  growth  of  civilization  and  knowl- 
edge, the  minor  supernatural  agents  became  merged  in  the  major 
supernatural  agent,  this  single  great  supernatural  agent,  gradually 
losing  the  anthropomorphic  attributes  at  first  ascribed,  has  come  in 
our  days  to  retain  but  few  of  them ;  and,  eventually  losing  these, 
will  then  merge  into  a  consciousness  of  an  Omnipresent  Power  to 
which  no  attributes  can  be  ascribed.  This  proposition  has  not  been 
contested. 

Without  entering  into  any  consideration  of  "what  Mr. 
Harrison  has  disproved  or  proved,  as  between  fetichism  and 
the  ghost-theory,  I  will  now  ask  why  the  beliefs  of  the  un- 
civilized races,  or  of  the  primitive  men,  should  he  regarded 
as  important  evidence  of  the  origin  of  beliefs  among  civ- 
ilized and  cultivated  men  ?  Is  modern  philosophy,  in  ac- 
counting for  or  justifying  the  belief  in  a  Supreme  Being 
which  is  held  to-day  by  most  of  the  cultivated  and  educated 
part  of  mankind,  to  assign  its  origin  to  the  primitive  and 
uncivilized  men  ?  Is  the  whole  idea  of  a  supernatural 
being  to  be  regarded  as  traditionally  handed  down  from 
our  barbarian  ancestors  ?  Is  there  no  other  source  from 
which  we  can  derive  that  idea  ?  Are  we  non'e  of  us  capable 
of  finding  for  ourselves  rational  grounds  of  belief  in  a  su- 
pernatural agent,  deducing  his  existence  from  a  study  of 
nature  ?  Or  must  we  trace  this  belief  back  through  the 
ages  until  we  arrive  at  an  origin  which  we  shall  of  course 
despise  ?  What  has  philosophy  to  do  now  with  "  the 
primitive  religion "  ?  Is  there  nothing  that  science  and 
reason  and  disciplined  methods  of  thought  and  sound 
deduction  can  teach  us  ?  Are  we  to  throw  away  all  the 
proofs  which  nature  spreads  before  us,  and  for  the  investi- 
gation of  which  we  have  accumulated  so  many  facilities, 
and  turn  to  the  beliefs  of  uncivilized  men  ?  Are  the  con- 
ceptions of  supernatural  beings,  to  which  a  barbarian  at- 


DEYELOPMEl^T  OF  A  FIRST  CAUSE.  287 

tained,  to  be  taken  as  the  origin  of  the  conception  of  a 
personal  God  to  which  an  educated  philosopher  can  now 
attain  ?  And  because  of  the  inadequate  and  childish  super- 
stitions of  the  past,  and  of  their  growth  into  a  belief  of  one 
supreme  supernatural  agent — whatever  that  idea  of  him  may 
have  been — is  the  consciousness  which  we  have  of  a  per- 
sonal God  to  be  hereafter  merged  into  a  consciousness  of 
an  Omnipresent  Power  to  which  no  attributes  can  be  as- 
cribed ? 

It  should  seem  that  the  mode  in  which  philosophy,  after 
it  came  to  be  cultivated  by  civilized  thinkers  and  observers, 
freed  itself  first  from  fetichism  and  the  ghost-theory  and 
all  the  beliefs  of  polytheism,  next  from  physical  agents  as 
the  causes  of  all  phenomena,  and  finally  attained  an  inde- 
pendent conception  of  a  First  Cause  as  a  supreme  personal 
intelligence  and  power,  is  worthy  of  some  consideration. 

In  the  first  chapter  of  this  work,  borrowing  from  the 
English  scholar  and  critic,  Mr.  Grote,  I  have  given  a  con- 
densed account  of  some  of  the  systems  of  Greek  philosophy 
which  began  in  the  first  half  of  the  sixth  century  before 
Christ,  and  extended  down  to  Plato,  whose  life  was  em- 
braced in  427-347  of  the  ante-Christian  era.  About  150 
B.  c,  the  Greek  philosophy,  and  especially  the  speculations 
of  Plato,  encountered  at  Alexandria  the  monotheism  of  the 
Hellenizing  Jews.*  This  history  of  Greek  philosophy,  as 
developed  by  Mr.  Grote,  shows  that  the  struggle  against 
polytheistic  agencies,  as  the  causes  of  natural  phenomena, 
began  with  efforts  to  find  purely  physical  agencies ;  that 
this  struggle,  in  spite  of  the  surrounding  beliefs  in  a  mul- 
titude of  supernatural  beings  of  different  orders,  was  long 
continued,  and  gave  rise  to  a  most  remarkable  variety  of 
scientific  explanations  ;  that  it  passed  through  an  extraor- 
dinary number  of  physical  theories,  until  at  length  in  Plato 

*  Grote's  "  Plato,"  iii,  pp.  284,  285. 


288  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

there  was  developed  the  idea  of  a  distinct  personal  con- 
structive actor,  the  Demiurgus,  a  being  to  whom,  whether 
intended  by  Plato  as  a  philosophical  myth,  or  as  an  entity 
in  which  he  had  something  of  faith  or  conviction,  he  as- 
signed the  formation  of  his  Kosmos.  With  characteristic 
acumen,  the  English  commentator  points  out  Plato's  skiU 
in  eluding  the  possible  charge  of  infidelity  to  the  established 
religion  of  Athens,  while  he  at  the  same  time  propounded 
the  existence  of  a  personal  First  Cause  that  was  in  a  strik- 
ing degree  inconsistent  with  the  popular  faith.  The  whole 
course  of  this  history  of  Greek  speculation  evinces  that 
from  an  early  period  the  Greek  philosophers  were  utter 
skeptics  in  regard  to  the  popular  religion  and  the  poetic 
traditions ;  that  they  not  only  did  not  derive  anything  from 
the  primitive  religion,  from  fetichism,  from  the  ghost- 
beliefs  of  their  barbarian  ancestors — if  their  ancestors  had 
such  beliefs — or  from  their  heroic  ages,  or  from  the  multi- 
tudinous gods  of  the  popular  theology  and  the  popular 
worship,  or  from  the  old  poetical  imagery,  but  that  they 
strove  to  get  away  from  all  these  sources,  and  to  construct 
theories  of  the  universe  that  would  explain  the  ultimate 
cause  or  causes  in  a  very  different  manner.  The  earliest 
Greek  speculators  got  no  further  in  tlieir  theories  than  the 
construction  of  systems  of  physical  agencies,  or  agencies 
that  stood  to  them  in  the  quality  of  physical  actors.  Plato, 
on  the  other  hand,  resorted  to  the  conception  of  a  supreme 
personal  actor. 

Mr.  Grote  has  further  mentioned  a  very  striking  fact, 
which  is,  that  before  the  Christian  era,  the  Demiurgus  of 
Plato  was  received  by  the  Hellenizing  Jews  at  Alexandria  as 
a  conception  kindred  to  the  God  of  Moses.  His  statement, 
in  substance  the  same  as  that  previously  made  by  a  Con- 
tinental critic,  Gfrorer,  is  so  interesting  and  important 
that  I  quote  his  words  :  "  But  though  the  idea  of  a  pre- 
kosmic  Demiurgus  found  little  favor  among  the  Grecian 


PLATO'S  DEMIUEGUS.  289 

schools  of  philosophy  before  the  Christian  era,  it  was  great- 
ly welcomed  among  the  Hellenizing  Jews  at  Alexandria, 
from  Aristobiilus  (about  B.  c.  150)  down  to  Philo.  It 
formed  the  suitable  point  of  conjunction  between  Hellenic 
and  Judaic  speculation.  The  marked  distinction  drawn  by 
Plato  between  the  Demiurgus,  and  the  constructed  or  gen- 
erated Kosmos,  with  its  in-dwelling  gods,  provided  a  suit- 
able place  for  the  Supreme  God  of  the  Jews,  degrading  the 
pagan  gods  by  comparison.  The  *  Timseus '  was  compared 
with  the  book  of  Genesis,  from  which  it  was  even  affirmed 
that  Plato  had  copied.  He  received  the  denomination  of 
the  Atticising  Moses — Moses  writing  in  Attic  Greek.  It 
was  thus  that  the  Platonic  *  Timaeus '  became  the  medium 
of  transition  from  the  polytheistic  theology,  which  served 
as  philosophy  among  the  early  ages  of  Greece,  to  the  om- 
nipotent monotheism  to  which  philosophy  became  subordi- 
nated after  the  Christian  era."  * 

Perhaps  there  is  no  more  remarkable  fact  than  this  in 
the  whole  history  of  philosophical  speculation.  Possibly 
Mr.  Spencer  would  say  that  it  adds  another  proof  to  his 
ghost-theory.  But  the  important  fact  is  that  Plato's  Demi- 
urgus partakes  in  no  degree  of  the  ghost  idea,  and,  instead 
of  being  a  modificati(5n  of  that  idea,  is  an  original  and  per- 
fectly independent  conception.  The  Demiurgus  of  Plato 
is  not  a  chief  spirit  evolved  in  imagination  out  of  a  hier- 
archy of  spirits.  He  is  himself  the  originator  and  fash- 
ioner of  the  gods,  of  whom  he  makes  use  as  ministers  in 
the  formation  of  the  bodies  of  the  primitive  men,  after  he 
has  himself  formed  the  souls  which  are  to  inhabit  them  for 
a  season. 

It  appears,  by  Mr.  G rote's  citations  from  Gfrorer,  that 
the  latter  had  previously  noted  what  Aristobulus  main- 
tained  one  hundred   and   fifty  years  earlier  than  Philo, 

*  Grote's  "Plato,"  iii,  p.  285,  and  notes. 


290  CEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

namely,  that  *'not  only  the  oldest  Grecian  poets,  Homer, 
Hesiod,  Orpheus,  etc.,  but  also  the  most  celebrated  thinkers, 
especially  Plato,  had  acquired  all  their  wisdom  from  a  yery 
old  translation  of  the  Pentateuch.''  Neither  of  these  mod- 
ern critics  appears  to  have  accepted  the  assertion  of  Aristo- 
bulus,  and  its  intrinsic  improbability  is  yery  great.  Cer- 
tainly the  internal  eyidence  of  the  "Timaeus"  negatives 
the  assumption  that  Plato  had  seen  the  Pentateuch,  for  his 
Demiurgus  is  not  the  God  of  Moses,  although  it  was  very 
natural  for  the  Alexandrian  Jews  to  think  they  recognized  a 
resemblance.  Mr.  Grote,  moreoyer,  seems  to  put  this  mat- 
ter beyond  doubt,  for  he  says  that  the  Platonic  "Timseus" 
became  the  medium  of  transition  from  the  polytheism  of 
early  Greece  to  the  monotheism  of  the  Christian  era.  This 
implies  yery  clearly  that  Mr.  Grote  did  not  consider  the 
Demiurgus  of  Plato  to  be  either  derived  from  the  polythe- 
ism of  the  early  Grecian  ages,  on  the  one  hand,  or  from 
the  Mosaic  Jehovah,  on  the  other  hand,  but  that  he  con- 
sidered it  a  conception  which  stood  between  them.  The 
point  of  resemblance  is  in  the  idea  of  a  divine  and  supreme 
personal  actor  in  the  production  of  phenomena. 

It  does  not  seem,  therefore,  that  a  philosopher  at  the 
present  day  is  confined  to  the  source  of  the  primitive  relig- 
ion, be  that  source  what  it  may.  The  primitive  religion, 
whether  its  origin  was  fetichism  or  a  belief  in  ghosts,  has 
imposed  no  shackles  upon  our  minds.  The  beliefs  of  the 
primitive  men  may  have  originated  as  Mr.  Spencer  sup- 
poses, but  the  question  for  us — ^revelation  being  laid  aside — 
is  just  what  it  was  for  Plato,  the  difference  being  that  our 
means  of  investigation  are  superior  to  his.  The  grounds 
of  our  belief  in  a  personal  God  are  not  the  same  as  those 
on  which  the  uncivilized  races  formed  first  the  idea  of  a 
wandering  double  emanating  from  the  human  body,  then 
conceived  of  spirits  or  ghosts,  next  of  different  orders  of 
spirits  or  ghosts,  and  finally  of  a  chief  and  supreme  spirit. 


THE  VALUES  OF  SOIENOE.  291 

Our  materials  for  sound  deduction  are  not  the  same  as 
those  of  the  primitive  races  of  mankind,  or  of  the  uncivil- 
ized tribes  of  the  present  day.  I  have  before  remarked 
that  the  intellectual  effort  of  a  savage  in  striving  for  the 
idea  of  a  deity  is  the  same  kind  of  effort  as  that  of  the 
civilized  and  educated  man ;  but  that  the  difference  be- 
tween them  is  in  the  growth  and  activity  of  the  reasoning 
power,  and  in  the  materials  on  which  it  is  exercised.  While 
our  barbarian  predecessors  lived  in  an  age  of  ignorance,  we 
live  in  an  age  of  knowledge.  "We  are  surrounded  by  ex- 
traordinary discoveries,  and  are  possessed  of  the  means  of 
still  further  research.  They  had  almost  no  means  for  in- 
vestigating physical  phenomena.  We  are,  or  ought  to  be, 
disciplined  reasoners.  They,  on  the  contrary,  while  able 
to  reason  correctly  on  a  very  few  subjects,  could  not  reason 
correctly  on  all  subjects.  We  are,  or  ought  to  be,  capable 
of  subjecting  the  materials  which  the  phenomena  of  nature 
spread  before  us,  to  sound  processes  of  thought  and  to 
logical  deductions.  We  are,  or  ought  to  be,  capable  of  dis- 
criminating between  that  which  is  really  inscrutable  and 
that  which  is  not  so.  We  are,  or  ought  to  be,  able  to  know 
when  we  are  within  the  bounds  of  possible  thought,  and 
when  we  transcend  them.  We  are,  or  ought  to  be,  able  to 
see  that  the  existence  of  phenomena  necessarily  implies  a 
causing  power ;  that  when  the  phenomena  are  such  as  we 
know  that  man  produces,  the  idea  of  an  intelligent  per- 
sonal actor  is  both  a  legitimate  deduction  and  a  perfectly 
appreciable  subject  of  thought.  Are  we  not  entitled  to 
apply  the  same  reasoning  to  the  phenomena  of  nature  which 
we  know  that  man  did  not  produce  ?  And  when  we  so 
reason,  do  we  borrow  anything  whatever  from  the  primitive 
idea  of  ghosts  or  spirits,  whether  they  are  supposed  to  have 
first  emanated  from  human  bodies,  or  to  reside  in  inauimate 
objects  ? 

There  are  two  distinct  values  to  be  assigned  to  the  re- 
U 


292  CREATION  OE  EVOLUTION? 

searches  of  science.  One  of  them  consists  in  the  practical 
improvement  of  the  material  condition  of  society ;  the  less- 
ening of  physical  evil,  the  increase  of  physical  good ;  the 
advancement  of  our  power  over  matter.  In  an  age  intense- 
ly devoted  to  this  materialistic  improvement,  there  will  be 
a  great  accumulation  of  physical  knowledge.  At  the  same 
time  there  are  accumulating  in  the  same  ratio  new  mate- 
rials for  philosophical  speculation  concerning  the  causes  of 
the  phenomena  that  are  investigated.  The  specialists  who 
carry  on  the  investigations  may  not  always  be  the  best 
reasoners  in  the  application  of  the  new  materials  to  the 
purpose  of  philosophical  inquiry  into  the  producing  causes 
of  the  phenomena.  But  the  other  distinct  value  of  their 
investigations  consists  in  the  accumulation  of  materials 
from  which  the  philosopher  can  deduce  the  existence  of  an 
actor  in  the  production  of  the  phenomena.  When,  from 
these  materials,  constantly  accumulating  and  constantly  to 
be  used  in  a  uniform  process  of  reasoning  to  which  the 
human  mind  is  both  able  and  obliged  to  resort,  the  philos- 
opher deduces  the  conception  of  a  supreme,  personal,  in- 
telligent being,  he  assigns  to  that  being  just  those  attributes 
which  the  phenomena  of  nature  compel  him  to  believe  in, 
because  if  the  attributes  did  not  exist  the  phenomena  of 
nature  could  not  have  become  what  they  are.  There  can 
be  no  reason  to  suppose  that  as  the  materials  increase,  as 
the  researches  of  science,  for  whatever  purpose  carried  on, 
lead  to  greater  and  still  greater  accumulations  of  knowl- 
edge, the  law  of  thought  by  which  we  deduce  the  idea  of 
an  actor  in  the  production  of  phenomena  will  change,  or 
that  the  logical  necessity  for  conceiving,  or  the  intellectual 
capacity  to  conceive  of,  the  attributes  of  that  actor  will 
either  diminish  or  fade  away.  |  An  Omnipotent  Power 
without  attributes,  or  one  to  which  no  attributes  can  be 
assigned,  is  not  likely  to  be  the  end  of  all  philosophical 
speculation  about  the  ultimate  cause.    Power  without  at- 


ANTHROPOMORPHISM.  293 

tributes,  power  without  a  determining  will,  power  without 
guidance,  or  purposes,  or  objects,  is  not  a  conception  to 
which  a  well-trained  intellect  is  now  likely  to  attain  ;  and 
the  greater  the  accumulation  of  physical  knowledge  be- 
comes, the  greater  will  be  the  necessity  to  such  an  intellect 
for  recognizing  attributes,  and  for  assigning  them  to  the 
power  which  is  manifested  by  the  phenomena.    ( 

According  to  Mr^^ncer,  the  process  by  which  man- 
kind are  ultimately  to  lose  the  consciousness  of  a  personal 
Deity  is  the  following  :  Anthropomorphic  attributes  were  at 
first  ascribed  to  the  single  great  supernatural  agent  of 
whom  the  primitive  men  conceiyed.  But  in  our  days,  the 
idea  of  such  a  supreme  supernatural  agent  has  come  to  re- 
tain but  a  few  of  these  attributes.  These  few  will  event- 
ually be  lost,  and  there  will  be  nothing  left  but  a  conscious- 
ness of  an  Omnipotent  Power  to  which  no  attributes  can 
be  ascribed.  The  probability  of  this  result  depends  upon 
the  necessity  for  ascribing  what  are  called  anthropomorphic 
attributes  to  the  Supreme  Being ;  or,  in  other  words,  it  de- 
pends upon  the  inquiry  whether,  in  order  to  ascribe  to  the 
Supreme  Being  any  attributes  at  all,  we  are  necessarily 
confined  to  those  which  are  anthropomorphic. 

'*  Anthropomorphism,"  a  term  compounded  from  the 
Greek  av^pwrros,  man,  and  ftopc^rj,  form,  has  come  to  sig- 
nify the  representation  of  the  Deity  under  a  human  form, 
or  with  human  attributes  and  affections.  It  is  therefore 
important  to  know  what  we  in  fact  do,  when  reasoning  on 
the  phenomena  of  nature,  we  reach  the  conclusion  that 
they  must  have  had  an  author  or  producer,  and  then  ascribe 
to  him  certain  attributes.  The  fact  that  the  ancient  relig- 
ious beliefs  ascribed  to  the  Supreme  Being  grossly  anthro- 
pomorphic attributes,  is  unimportant.  So  is  the  fact  that 
the  anthropomorphic  attributes  have  been  slowly  diminish- 
ing in  the  conceptions  of  the  reasoning  and  cultivated  part 
of  mankind.     The  really  important  question  is  whether 


294  CEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

there  can  be  no  conception  of  a  Supreme  Being  without 
ascribing  to  him  attributes  which  liken  him  to  man ;  or 
whether,  when  the  anthropomorphic  attributes  are  lost, 
the  idea  of  a  personal  God  will  be  lost. 

The  essential  character  of  any  anthropomorphic  or  hu- 
man attribute — power  for  example,  or  wisdom,  or  goodness 
— is  that  it  is  limited,  imperfect,  and  liable  to  error.  But 
when  we  conceiye  of  these  qualities  as  existing  in  absolute 
perfection  and  boundless  capacity,  while  we  retain  the  idea 
that  they  are  personal  qualities,  we  in  fact  divest  them  of 
their  anthropomorphic  or  human  character.  It  is  a  contra- 
diction in  terms  to  say  that  an  imperfect  human  capacity 
is  the  same  attribute  as  a  divine  and  unlimited  capacity. 
The  difficulty  with  the  ancient  religious  beliefs,  the 
whole  error  of  anthropomorphism,  was  that  the  conceptions 
stopped  short  of  the  idea  of  unlimited  power,  wisdom,  and 
benevolence.  The  attributes  ascribed  to  the  Deity  likened 
him  to  man  in  form,  character,  powers,  dispositions,  pas- 
sions. He  was  an  exaggerated  human  being,  with  vastly 
more  power,  more  skill,  more  wisdom,  but  still  with  the 
same  kind  of  power,  skill,  and  wisdom,  actuated  by  like 
motives  and  governed  by  like  passions.  Now  the  truth  is, 
that  the  difference  between  a  limited  and  imperfect  attri- 
bute of  character  and  one  that  is  boundless — ^power,  for  ex- 
ample— is  more  than  a  difference  of  degree.  It  is  a  differ- 
ence in  kind  ;  for  while  in  both  cases  we  conceive  of  a  per- 
sonal capacity  to  act  and  a  will  to  guide  the  act,  in  the  one 
case  we  are  thinking  of  that  which  is  inferior,  limited,  and 
feeble,  and  in  the  other  case  we  are  thinking  of  that  which 
knows  no  limitations  and  is  absolutely  inexhaustible.  It 
is  not  true,  therefore,  that  there  can  be  no  conception  of  a 
Supreme  Being  without  ascribing  to  him  human  attributes. 
When  we  reason  from  phenomena  to  the  conclusion  that 
they  must  have  had  an  author — when  we  reach  the  convic- 
tion that  phenomena  must  have  had  a  cause,  that  there 


ATTRIBUTES  OF  THE  CREATOR.  295 

must  have  been  an  actor,  a  process,  and  a  product — we 
have  to  deal  with  two  classes  of  phenomena.  One  is  the 
class  in  which  we  know,  from  the  observations  of  our  senses 
and  our  experience,  that  the  author  and  actor  was  man. 
It  becomes  verified  to  us  with  irresistible  certainty  that  the 
phenomena  of  human  society  were  produced  by  an  actor, 
and  that  that  actor  was  man  ;  a  personal  agent  with  a 
limited  and  imperfect  power.  When  we  turn  to  the  phe- 
nomena of  nature  which  we  know  that  man  did  not  pro- 
duce, we  are  led  by  the  same  irresistible  logical  sequence  of 
thought  to  the  conviction  that  these  phenomena  must  have 
been  caused  to  exist,  for  human  reason  revolts  at  the  idea 
that  the  phenomena  which  exist  were  not  caused  to  exist. 
We  come  immediately  to  perceive  that  the  phenomena  of 
nature  are  of  such  a  character  that  the  power  which  has 
produced  them  must  not  only  have  been  superhuman,  but 
it  must  have  been  absolutely  boundless.  At  the  moment 
we  depart  from  the  investigation  of  phenomena  which  belong 
in  the  department  of  human  efforts,  and  come  to  the  phe- 
nomena which  belong  in  the  department  of  nature  alone, 
while  the  necessity  for  a  personal  actor  continues,  the  char- 
acter and  capacities  of  the  actor  become  entirely  changed. 
We  see  that  the  phenomena  of  nature  required  for  their 
production  power  without  limitation,  skill  incapable  of 
error,  benevolence  that  was  inexhaustible.  We  thus  pass 
entirely  away  from  anthropomorphic  attributes,  to  the  con- 
ception of  attributes  that  are  not  human.  We  may  go  on 
to  divest  the  idea  of  a  Supreme  Being  of  all  the  attributes 
that  can  appropriately  be  classed  as  anthropomorphic,  and 
there  will  still  remain  the  conception  of  a  Supreme  Being  to 
whom  we  not  only  may  but  must  ascribe  attributes  that  are 
forced  upon  our  convictions,  not  because  some  of  them  belong 
in  an  inferior  degree  to  man,  but  because  all  of  them  are  of 
such  a  character  that  if  they  did  not  exist  in  boundless 
perfection  the  phenomena  of  nature  could  not  have  existed. 


296  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

Among  the  origins  which  have  been  assigned  to  relig- 
ious beliefs,  there  is  one  remarkable  hypothesis  which  may 
be  contrasted  with  the  ghost-theory,  and  which,  so  far  as 
the  beliefs  of  cultivated  men  at  the  present  day  are  con- 
cerned, is  about  as  important  as  the  origin  of  the  belief  in 
ghosts,  or  as  fetichism.  It  seems  that  some  of  the  Greek 
philosophers  and  historians,  entirely  regardless  of  the  ghost- 
theory  as  the  origin  of  beliefs  in  supernatural  beings,  con- 
sidered that  they  were  fictions  inyented  by  the  first  law- 
givers, and  promulgated  by  them  for  useful  purposes.  Be- 
lief in  the  gods  was  thus  imposed  by  the  authority  of  those 
who  organized  society  and  dictated  what  men  were  to  be- 
lieve in  order  to  exercise  a  useful  restraint.  Plato  himself 
regarded  this  as  the  origin  of  what  the  communities  around 
him  believed  respecting  the  attributes  and  acts  of  the  gods  ; 
the  matters  believed  being  fictions  prescribed  by  the  law- 
givers. In  his  "Eepublic,''  in  which  he  sketcbes  the  en- 
tire political,  social,  ethical,  and  religious  constitution  of 
an  ideal  city,  assuming  it  to  be  planned  and  put  in  opera- 
tion by  an  absolute  and  unlimited  authority,  he  laid  it 
down  as  essential  for  the  lawgiver  to  determine  what  the 
fictions  were  to  be  in  which  his  own  community  were  to 
be  required  to  believe.  Some  fictions  there  must  be ;  for 
in  the  community  there  would  be  originally  nothing  but  a 
vague  emotional  tendency  to  belief  in  supernatural  beings, 
and  this  tendency  must  be  availed  of  by  some  positive 
mythical  inventions  which  it  was  for  the  lawgiver  to  pro- 
duce and  the  citizens  to  accept.  Such  fictions  were  the 
accredited  stories  about  the  gods  and  heroes,  which  formed 
the  religious  beliefs  among  Plato's  contemporaries,  and 
were  everywhere  embodied  in  the  works  of  poets,  painters, 
and  sculptors,  and  in  the  religious  ceremonies.  But  the 
ancient  fictions  were,  in  Plato's  opinion,  bad,  inasmuch  as 
they  gave  wrong  ethical  ideas  of  the  characters  of  the  gods. 
They  did  not  rest  upon  traditionary  evidence,  or  divine 


RELIGIOUS  BELIEFS  IN  PLATO'S  REPUBLIO.      297 

inspiration,  being  merely  pious  frauds,  constructed  by  au- 
thority and  for  an  orthodox  purpose.  But  they  did  not 
fulfill  the  purpose  as  well  as  they  should  have  done.  Ac- 
cordingly, Plato  directs  in  his  "  Republic  "  the  coinage  of 
a  new  body  of  legends,  for  which  he  claims  no  character  of 
veracity,  but  which  will  be  more  in  harmony  with  what  he 
conceives  to  be  the  true  characters  of  the  gods,  and  wiU 
produce  a  more  salutary  ethical  effect  upon  those  who  are 
to  be  the  efficient  rulers  of  the  commonwealth  after  it  is 
founded.  As  the  founder  of  his  ideal  city,  he  claims  and 
exercises  an  exclusive  monopoly  of  coining  and  circulating 
such  fictions,  and  they  are  to  be  absolutely  accepted  by 
those  who  are  to  constitute  its  rulers,  and  who  are  to  pro- 
mulgate and  teach  them  to  the  community,  as  the  phy- 
sician administers  wholesome  remedies.  To  prevent  the 
circulation  of  dissenting  narratives,  he  establishes  a  per- 
emptory censorship.  There  is  thus  no  question  of  absolute 
truth  or  absolute  falsehood.  That  is  true  which  is  stamped 
at  the  mint  of  the  lawgiver,  and  that  is  false  which  he 
interdicts.* 

Nowhere  has  orthodoxy  been  rested  more  distinctly 
upon  the  basis  of  absolute  human  authority — authority  act- 
ing upon  the  highest  motives  of  the  public  good,  for  the 
most  salutary  purposes,  but  without  claiming  anything  in 
the  nature  of  divine  inspiration,  or  even  pretending  to  any 
other  truth  than  conformity  to  preconceived  ideas  of  the 
characters  of  the  gods.  As  evidence  of  what  Plato  regarded 
as  the  origin  of  the  religious  beliefs  which  were  held  by 
his  contemporaries,  his  ^^  Republic  "  is  an  important  testi- 
mony ;  for  he  assigns  almost  nothing  to  mankind  in  gen- 
eral, but  an  emotional  tendency  to  believe  in  invisible 
quasi-human  agents,  of  whom  they  had  no  definite  con- 
ceptions, and  at  the  same  time  they  were  entirely  ignorant 

*  Grote's  "Plato,"  iii,  p.  181  e<  seq. 


298  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

of  recorded  history,  past  and  present.  They  needed  dis- 
tinct legendary  fictions  and  invented  narratives  ;  these  were 
furnished  to  them  by  those  who  could  coin  them,  and  were 
accepted  upon  the  authority  of  those  who  promulgated 
them.  Those  who  first  embodied  the  fictions  as  narratives 
were  the  oldest  poets  ;  in  progress  of  time  the  authority 
which  dictated  belief  in  them  came  to  be  the  state.  Plato 
rejected  the  fictions  of  the  state,  and  in  his  *'  Kepublic " 
proposed  to  substitute  fictions  of  his  own.  The  testimony 
of  Plato,  therefore,  in  respect  to  the  origin  of  religious  be- 
liefs in  the  early  ages  of  Greece  is  decidedly  against  the 
ghost-theory,  whatever  support  may  be  found  for  that 
theory  in  the  beliefs  of  the  uncivilized  races  of  our  own 
day,  or  in  the  beliefs  of  other  nations  of  antiquity.  But 
neither  the  ghost-theory,  as  the  origin  of  beliefs  in  super- 
natural beings,  nor  the  origin  of  such  beliefs  in  the  will 
of  the  lawgiver,  which  Plato  clearly  held  in  his  "  Eepub- 
lic  "  to  be  the  foundation  of  orthodoxy,  is  any  test  or  meas- 
ure of  what  philosophy  may  attain  to  as  a  rational  con- 
ception at  the  present  day.* 

*  The  contradictions  between  Plato's  ideas  of  the  origin  of  beliefs  in 
the  gods,  as  given  in  his  various  writings,  are  of  course  unimportant  in 
reference  to  the  present  discussion.  In  the  "  Timaeus,"  as  Mr.  Grote  has 
pointed  out,  Plato  "  accepts  the  received  genealogy  of  the  gods,  upon  the 
authority  of  the  sons  and  early  descendants  of  the  gods.  These  sons  must 
have  known  their  own  fathers;  we  ought,  therefore,  to  'follow  the  law 
and  believe  them,*  though  they  spoke  without  either  probable  or  demon- 
strative proof.  .  .  .  That  which  Plato  here  enjoins  to  be  believed  is  the 
genealogy  of  Hesiod  and  other  poets,  though  he  does  not  expressly  name 
the  poets."  (Grote,  iii,  p.  189,  note.)  In  other  words,  the  sons  of  the  gods 
are  authoritative  witnesses  to  their  genealogy,  whose  ipsi  diximus  must  be 
believed.  On  the  other  hand,  in  his  "  Republic  "  and  "  Leges,"  Plato  rejects 
the  authority  of  those  witnesses,  and  boldly  proclaims  that  their  legends 
are  fictions,  which  must  be  displaced  by  better  fictions,  more  consonant  to 
a  true  ethical  conception  of  the  characters  of  the  gods.  It  is  the  province 
of  the  lawgiver  to  supply  these  better  legends,  but  they  are  all  the  while 
fictions,  although  the  multitude  do  not  know  that  they  are  so.    Mr.  Grote 


AN  IDEAL  PHILOSOPHER.  299 

I  propose,  therefore,  to  imagine  a  man  of  mature  years, 
without  any  religious  prepossessions  whatever,  a  perfectly 
independent  thinker,  furnished  with  the-  knowledge  that  is 
now  within  the  easy  reach  of  human  acquisition,  capable 
of  correct  reasoning,  and  with  no  bias  to  any  kind  of  belief. 
It  is  only  necessary  to  personify  in  one  individual  the  in- 
tellectual capacity  of  the  cultivated  and  educated  part  of 
mankind,  but  without  the  religious  ideas  instilled  into 
them  by  education,  in  order  to  have  a  valuable  witness  to 
the  mental  processes  and  results  which  can  be  followed  and 
attained  by  a  right  employment  of  our  faculties.  And,  the 
better  to  exhibit  the  processes  and  results,  I  propose  to  let 
this  imaginary  person  discuss  in  the  form  of  dialogue,  in 
which  another  imaginary  interlocutor  shall  be  a  modem 
disciple  of  the  evolution  school,  whatever  topics  would  be 
likely  to  come  into  debate  between  such  persons. 

» — 

accounts  for  these  and  other  discrepancies  in  the  writmgs  of  Plato  by  ex- 
plaining that  his  different  dialogues  are  not  interdependent  productions, 
but  separate  disquisitions.  (See  his  admirable  and  critical  examination  of 
the  Platonic  canon,  in  Chapters  IV,  V,  VI,  of  his  first  volume.) 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

The  existence,  attributes,  and  methods  of  God  deducible  from  the  phenom- 
ena of  Nature — Origin  of  the  solar  system. 

In  all  that  has  been  said  in  the  preceding  chapters  respect- 
ing the  two  hypotheses  of  special  creation  and  eyolution,  the 
existence  and  attributes  of  the  Supreme  Being  have  been 
assumed.  The  question  of  the  existence  and  attributes  of 
God  has  been  reserved  for  discussion  as  an  independent  in- 
quiry ;  and  this  inquiry  it  is  now  proposed  to  make,  with- 
out any  reference  to  the  teachings  of  revealed  religion,  or 
to  the  traditionary  beliefs  of  mankind.  The  simple  idea  of 
God,  which  I  suppose  to  be  capable  of  being  reached  as  a 
philosophical  deduction  from  the  phenomena  of  the  uni- 
verse, embraces  the  conception  of  a  Supreme  Being  existing 
from  and  through  all  eternity,  and  possessed  of  the  attri- 
butes of  infinite  power  and  goodness,  boundless,  that  is  to 
say  in  faculties,  incapable  of  error,  and  of  supreme  benefi- 
cence. While  this  idea  of  God  corresponds  with  that  which 
has  been  held  from  an  early  period  under  more  or  less  of  the 
influence  exerted  by  teachings  which  have  been  accepted 
as  inspired,  or  as  authorized  by  the  Deity  himself,  the  ques- 
tion here  to  be  considered  is  whether  the  same  idea  of  God 
is  a  rationally  philosophical  deduction  from  the  phenom- 
ena of  the  universe  without  the  aid  of  revelation. 

In  order  to  conduct  this  inquiry  so  as  to  exclude  all  in- 
fluence of  traditionary  beliefs  derived  from  sources  believed 
to  have  been  inspired,  or  from  any  authority  whatever,  let 


THE  SOLAR  SYSTEM.  301 

us  suppose  a  man  to  have  been  bom  into  tbis  world  in 
the  full  maturity  of  average  human  faculties,  as  they  are 
found  in  well-diseiplined  intellects  of  the  present  age,  but 
without  any  inculcated  ideas  on  religious  subjects.  In  the 
place  of  education  commencing  in  infancy  and  carried  on 
to  the  years  of  maturity,  in  the  course  of  which  more  or 
less  of  dogmatic  theology  would  have  become  incorporated 
almost  with  the  texture  of  the  mind,  let  us  suppose,  that 
the  mind  of  our  inquirer  is  at  first  a  total  blank  in  respect 
to  a  belief  in  or  conception  of  such  a  being  as  God,  but 
that  his  intellectual  powers  are  so  well  developed  that  he 
can  reason  soundly  upon  whatever  comes  within  the  reach 
of  his  observation  or  study.  Let  us  further  imagine  him 
to  be  so  situated  that  he  can  command  at  will  the  knowl- 
edge that  science,  as  it  now  exists,  could  furnish  to  him, 
and  that  he  is  able  to  judge  impartially  any  theories  with 
which  he  meets.  Such  a  person  would  be  likely  to  deal 
rationally  and  independently  with  any  question  that  might 
arise  in  the  course  of  his  investigations ;  and  the  funda- 
mental question  that  would  be  likely  to  present  itself  to  his 
mind  would  be,  How  came  this  universe  and  its  countless 
phenomena  to  exist  ? 

Stimulated  by  an  eager  curiosity,  but  careful  to  make 
his  investigations  with  entire  coolness  of  reasoning,  let  us 
suppose  that  our  inquirer  first  turns  his  attention  to  the 
phenomena  of  the  solar  system,  and  to  what  astronomy  can 
teach  him  in  regard  to  its  construction.  He  finds  it  to 
consist  of — 

1.  The  sun,  a  great  central  body  giving  forth  light  and 
heat. 

2.  A  group  of  four  interior  planets  :  Mercury,  Venus,  the 
Earth,  and  Mars. 

3.  A  group  of  small  planets,  called  asteroids,  revolving 
beyond  the  orbit  of  Mars,  and  numbering,  according  to  the 
latest  discoveries,  about  two  hundred  and  twenty. 


302  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

4.  A  group  of  four  planets  beyond  the  asteroids  :  Jupi- 
ter, Saturn,  Uranus,  and  Neptune. 

5.  The  satellites  of  the  planets,  of  which  there  are 
twenty  now  known  ;  all  but  three  of  them  belonging  to 
the  outer  planets. 

6.  An  intermediate  number  of  bodies  called  comets  and 
meteors,  which  revolve  in  very  eccentric  orbits. 

This  system  of  bodies,  constituting  a  mechanism  by  it- 
self, apart  from  what  are  called  the  fixed  stars,  is  the  first 
object  in  nature  to  which  our  inquirer  directs  his  studies. 
Inasmuch  as  the  comets  and  meteors  move  in  very  eccen- 
tric orbits,  and  are  supposed  to  come  into  our  system  from 
the  illimitable  spaces  beyond  it,  although  in  the  case  of  the 
comets,  or  some  of  them,  mathematical  calculations  ena- 
ble astronomers  to  predict  their  return  when  they  have 
passed  out  of  the  solar  system,  and  inasmuch  as  the  sun 
and  the  superior  planets  may  be  contemplated  as  a  grand 
piece  of  mechanism,  and  as  the  greatest  mechanical  object 
in  nature  of  whose  construction  and  movements  we  have 
some  accurate  knowledge,  we  will  suppose  that  our  inquirer 
confines  his  attention  to  this  part  of  the  solar  system,  with- 
out adverting  to  the  action  of  the  bodies  which  are  not  al- 
ways, as  these  are,  within  the  range  of  the  telescope. 

One  of  the  first  things  that  would  strike  him  would  be 
the  enormous  range  in  the  sizes,  distances,  and  relative 
weights  of  these  different  bodies.  He  would  learn,  for  ex- 
ample, that  Neptune  is  eighty  times  as  far  from  the  sun  as 
Mercury,  and  that  Jupiter'  is  several  thousand  times  as 
heavy  ;  and  he  would  observe  that  these  differences  in  mag- 
nitude, distance  from  the  sun,  and  weight  of  each  mass,  are 
carried  through  a  range  of  proportions  stupendously  great. 
If  he  followed  the  best  lights  of  modern  astronomy,  he 
would  learn  that  what  is  known,  or  accepted  as  known,  in 
regard  to  the  operation  of  any  law  among  these  bodies,  is 
that  they  are  bound  together  by  the  law  of  universal  gravi- 


AN  ILLUSTRATION.  303 

tation  as  a  force  to  which  all  matter  would  be  subjected 
when  it  should  come  to  exist,  in  whatever  forms  it  might 
be  distributed ;  secondly,  that  when  the  bodies  now  com- 
posing the  solar  system  should  come  into  existence,  the 
system  would  not  owe  its  proportions  to  the  operation  of 
the  law  of  gravitation,  but  would  be  the  result  of  a  plan  so 
shaped  as  to  admit  of  its  being  governed  by  the  law  of 
gravitation  after  the  system  had  been  made,  in  such  a  man- 
ner as  to  produce  regularity  and  certainty  of  movement 
and  to  prevent  dislocation  and  disturbance.  What  the  great 
modem  telescopes  have  enabled  astronomers  to  discover 
tends  very  strongly  to  show  that  the  plan  of  the  solar  sys- 
tem, in  respect  to  the  relative  distances,  magnitudes,  and 
revolutions  of  the  different  bodies  around  the  sun,  and 
their  relations  to  that  central  body  and  to  each  other,  are 
not  the  result  of  any  antecedent  law  which  gradually 
evolved  this  particular  plan,  but  that  the  plan  itself  was 
primarily  designed  and  executed  as  one  on  which  the  law 
of  gravitation  could  operate  uniformly,  and  so  as  to  pre- 
vent any  disturbance  in  the  relations  of  the  different  bodies 
to  each  other.* 

An  illustration  will  help  to  make  the  meaning  of  this 
apparent.  Let  us  suppose  a  human  artificer  to  project  the 
formation  of  a  complex  mechanism,  in  which  different 
solid  bodies  would  be  made  to  revolve  around  a  central 
body  ;  and  let  us  imagine  him  to  be  situated  outside  of  the 
earth's  attraction,  so  that  its  attraction  would  not  disturb 
him.  He  would  then  have  to  consider  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion only  in  reference  to  its  operation  among  the  different 
bodies  of  his  machine  ;  and  he  would  adjust  their  relative 
distances,  weights,  and  orbits  of  revolution  around  the 


*  The  reader  will  understand  that  I  do  not  assert  this  to  be  what  as- 
tronomers teach,  but  I  maintain  it  to  be  a  rational  deduction  from  the  facta 
which  they  furnish  to  us. 


304  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

central  body,  so  thafc  the  law  of  gravitation,  instead  of  pro- 
ducing dislocation  and  disturbance,  would  bind  the  whole 
together  in  a  fixed  system  of  moyement,  by  counteracting 
the  centrifugal  tendency  of  a  reyolving  body  to  depart 
from  its  intended  orbit,  and  at  the  same  time  relying  on 
the  effect  of  the  two  forces  in  preventing  the  revolving 
bodies  from  falling  into  the  center  or  from  rushing  off  into 
the  endless  realms  of  space. 

This  is  what  may  well  be  supposed  to  have  taken  place 
in  the  formation  of  the  solar  system,  for  it  is  consistent 
with  the  law  which  must  have  preceded  the  existence  of 
that  system.  We  can  not  suppose  that  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion was  itself  a  mere  result  of  the  relative  distances,  mag- 
nitudes, and  orbits  of  the  different  bodies.  This  supposi- 
tion would  make  gravitation  not  a  law,  but  a  phenomenon. 
We  do  indeed  arrive  at  the  existence  of  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion by  observing  the  actions  of  the  bodies  which  compose 
the  solar  system  ;  in  other  words,  we  discover  the  law  that 
holds  them  together,  by  observing  their  actions.  But  we 
should  entirely  reverse  the  proper  process  of  reasoning,  if 
we  were  to  conclude  that  the  law  of  gravitation  is  a  phe- 
nomenon resulting  from  an  arrangement  of  certain  bodies 
according  to  a  certain  plan.  The  discoveries  of  astronomy, 
on  the  contrary,  should  lead  us  to  regard  gravitation  as  a 
universal  law,  which  existed  before  the  existence  of  the 
bodies  which  have  been  subjected  to  it.  This  is  the  only 
way  in  which  our  inquirer  could  reason  in  regard  to  the 
formation  of  the  solar  system,  whether  he  supposed  its 
plan  to  have  been  a  special  creation,  or  to  have  been  evolved 
out  of  a  nebulous  vapor  by  the  operation  of  the  laws  of 
motion  or  any  other  laws.  Reasoning  upon  the  hypothesis 
that  the  law  of  gravitation  existed  before  there  were  any 
bodies  for  it  to  operate  upon,  or,  in  other  words,  that  it  had 
become  in  some  way  an  ordained  or  established  principle  by 
which  all  bodies  would  be  governed,  he  would  have  the 


MORAL  AND  PHYSICAL  LAW3.  305 

means  of  understanding  the  adaptation  of  the  solar  sys- 
tem to  be  operated  upon  by  the  law  which  he  had  dis- 
covered. 

He  would  next  ask  himself,  How  came  this  law  of 
gravitation  to  exist  ?  That  it  must  have  had  an  origin, 
must  have  proceeded  from  some  lawgiver  competent  to 
make  and  enforce  it,  would  be  a  conclusion  to  which  he 
would  be  irresistibly  led,  for  the  very  idea  of  a  law  implies 
that  it  is  a  command  proceeding  from  an  authority  and 
power  capable  of  ordaining  and  executing  it.  When  it  is 
said  that  a  law  is  a  rule  of  action  ordained  by  a  supreme 
power,  which  is  perhaps  the  most  familiar  as  it  is  the  most 
exact  definition,  the  idea  of  a  command  and  of  a  power  to 
enforce  it  is  necessarily  implied.  This  is  just  as  true  of  a 
physical  as  it  is  of  a  moral  law  ;  of  a  law  that  is  to  govern 
matter  as  of  a  law  that  is  to  govern  moral  and  accountable 
beings.  Both  proceed  from  a  supreme  authority  and 
power,  and  both  are  commands.  There  is,  however,  one 
distinction  between  a  moral  law  and  a  law  of  Nature,  which 
relates  to  the  mode  in  which  we  arrive  at  a  knowledge  of 
the  law;  a  distinction  which  our  inquirer  would  learn  in 
the  course  of  his  investigations.  We  infer  the  existence  of 
a  law  of  Nature,  or  a  law  designed  to  operate  upon  matter, 
from  the  regularity  and  uniformity  of  certain  physical  phe- 
nomena. As  the  phenomena  occur  always  in  the  same  way 
we  infer  it  to  be  an  ordinance  of  Nature  that  they  shall  oc- 
cur in  that  way.  But  the  moral  phenomena  exhibited  by 
the  actions  of  men  have  not  this  regularity  and  uniformity. 
They  are  sometimes  in  accordance  with  and  sometimes 
grossly  variant  from  any  supposed  rule  of  moral  action. 
We  can  not,  therefore,  deduce  a  moral  law  from  our  obser- 
vation of  the  actions  of  the  beings  whom  it  was  designed 
to  govern,  but  we  must  discover  it  from  the  rules  of  right 
reason  and  from  such  information  as  has  been  given  to  us 
by  whatever  revelation  may  have  come  to  us  from  another 


306  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

source  than  our  own  minds.  But  this  distinction  between 
the  modes  of  reaching  a  knowledge  of  physical  and  moral 
laws  does  not  apply  to  the  authority  from  which  they  have 
proceeded.  Both  of  them  being  commands,  or  fixed  rules 
of  action,  both  must  have  had  an  enacting  authority.  We 
leani  the  one  by  observing  the  phenomena  of  Nature.  We 
learn  the  other  from  reason  and  revelation. 

To  return  now  to  the  examination  of  the  solar  system, 
which  our  inquirer  is  supposed  to  be  prosecuting.  The 
study,  which  astronomy  and  its  implements  will  have  en- 
abled him  to  make,  has  taught  him  the  existence  of  the 
law  of  gravitation,  and  has  led  him  to  the  conclusion  that 
it  must  have  had  an  enacting  authority.  Following  out  the 
operation  of  this  law,  through  the  stupendous  spaces  of  the 
solar  system,  he  would  begin  to  form  conclusions  respecting 
the  attributes  of  its  author.  He  would  see  that  the  power 
must  have  been  superhuman  ;  in  other  words,  that  it  must 
have  immeasurably  transcended  anything  that  can  be  im- 
agined of  power  wielded  by  a  being  of  less  than  infinite 
capacities ;  for,  although  the  space  occupied  by  the  solar 
system,  from  the  central  sun  out  to  the  orbit  of  the  planet 
Neptune,  is  a  measurable  distance,  the  conception  of  the 
law  of  gravitation,  and  its  execution,  through  such  an 
enormous  space  and  among  such  a  complex  system  of  bodies, 
evince  a  faculty  in  the  lawgiver  that  must  have  been  bound- 
less in  power  and  skill.  The  force  of  gravitation  is  found 
to  exactly  balance  the  centrifugal  tendency  of  the  bodies 
revolving  around  the  sun,  so  that,  when  once  set  in  motion 
around  that  center,  they  remain  in  their  respective  orbits 
and  never  fall  into  the  sun  or  into  each  other.  Our  learner 
would  thus  see  the  nature  of  the  adjustment  required  to 
produce  such  a  result ;  and,  even  if  he  endeavored  to  follow 
out  this  balancing  of  forces  no  farther  than  to  the  extreme 
boundary  of  the  solar  system,  he  would  see  that  the  being, 
who  could  conceive  and  execute  such  a  design  on  such  a 


THE  NEBULAR  HYPOTHESIS.  307 

scale,  must  have  had  supreme  power  and  boundless  intelli- 
gence. So  that,  by  the  study  of  the  solar  system,  as  its 
arrangements  and  moyements  are  disclosed  by  astronomy, 
our  inquirer  would  be  naturally  led  to  the  conception  of  a 
lawgiver  and  artificer  of  infinite  power  and  wisdom,  or- 
daining the  law  of  gravitation  to  operate  against  the  centrif- 
ugal force,  which  would  otherwise  conduct  out  of  its  orbit 
a  body  revolving  around  a  center,  and  then  adjusting  the 
relative  distances,  weights,  and  revolutions  of  the  different 
bodies,  so  as  to  subject  them  to  the  operation  of  the  great 
law  that  is  to  preserve  them  in  fixed  relations  to  each  other. 
If,  next,  our  inquirer  should  go  farther  in  his  investiga- 
tions of  the  solar  system,  and  endeavor  to  satisfy  himself 
concerning  the  mode  in  which  the  different  bodies  of  this 
system  came  into  existence  in  their  respective  positions,  the 
history  of  astronomy  would  teach  him  that  there  has  been  a 
theory  on  this  subject  which  fails  to  account  for  the  exist- 
ence of  this  system  of  bodies  without  the  hypothesis  of  some 
special  creation.  This  theory  is  what  is  called  the  nebular 
hypothesis.  It  supposes  that  the  solar  system  was  evolved 
out  of  a  mass  of  fiery  vapor,  which  filled  the  stellar  spaces, 
and  which  became  the  bodies  now  observable  by  the  tele- 
scope, and  that  they  were  finally  swung  into  their  respective 
places  by  the  operation  of  the  fixed  laws  of  motion.  But 
aU  that  astronomers  now  undertake  to  say  is  that  this  hy- 
pothesis is  a  probably  true  account  of  the  origin  of  the  solar 
system,  and  not  that  it  is  an  established  scientific  fact,  or 
a  fact  supported  by  such  proofs  as  those  which  show  the 
existence  of  the  laws  of  motion.  The  history  of  the  nebular 
hypothesis,  from  the  time  of  its  first  suggestion  to  the  pres- 
ent day,  shows  that  there  are  no  satisfactory  means  of  ac- 
counting for  the  method  in  which  the  supposed  mass  of 
fiery  vapor  became  separated,  consolidated,  and  formed 
into  different  bodies,  and  those  bodies  became  ranged  and 
located  in  their  respective  positions.     The  hypothesis  that 


308  CREATIO]!^  OR  EYOLdTION? 

these  results  were  all  produced  by  fixed  laws  working  upon 
a  mass  of  fiery  yapor,  is  one  that  has  been  reasoned  out  in 
very  different  ways  ;  and  this  diversity  of  views  is  such  that 
astronomers  of  the  higher  order  do  not  undertake  to  say  that 
opinions  may  not  reasonably  differ  in  regard  to  the  princi- 
pal question,  namely,  the  question  between  the  nebular 
hypothesis  and  the  hypothesis  of  a  special  act  or  acts  of 
creation. 

Inasmuch,  therefore,  as  scientific  astronomy  would  pre- 
sent to  our  inquirer  nothing  but  the  nebular  hypothesis  to 
account  for  the  production  of  the  bodies  of  the  solar  system 
as  they  now  exist,  and  as  there  are  admitted  difficulties  in 
this  hypothesis  which  may  not  be  insurmountable  but  which 
have  not  been  as  yet  by  any  means  overcome,  it  can  not  be 
said  that  philosophers  are  warranted  in  assuming  that  all 
the  phenomena  of  the  solar  system  are  to  be  explained  by 
this  theory.  The  hypothesis  that  the  phenomena,  or  some 
part  of  them,  have  been  produced  by  a  cause  operating  in 
a  different  way,  that  is,  by  an  act  or  acts  of  intentional  and 
direct  or  special  creation,  is  not  excluded  by  the  discoveries 
of  the  astronomer.  Those  discoveries  lie  in  the  domain  of 
astronomy,  and  they  do  not  exclude  the  hypothesis  of  a 
special  creation  of  the  solar  system  upon  the  plan  on  which 
we  find  it  arranged.  The  latter  hypothesis  lies  in  the  do- 
main of  philosophy.  It  is  to  be  judged  by  the  inquiry 
whether  it  is  a  rational  explanation  of  phenomena,  which 
astronomy  does  not  show  as  an  established  scientific  fact, 
or  by  proofs  that  ought  to  be  deemed  satisfactory,  to  have 
been  produced  by  the  method  suggested  by  the  nebular  hy- 
pothesis. 

The  philosophic  reasoning,  *  which  would  conduct  our 
inquirer  to  his  conclusions,  would  begin  for  him  with  the 
existence  of  an  omnipotent  being,  by  whom  the  laws  of 
matter  and  motion  were  established.  This  conception  and 
belief  he  has  attained  from  having  discovered  those  laws. 


DEBATE  INTRODUCED.  309 

whicli  must  have  had  an  author.  He  would  soon  hear  the 
scientist  speak  of  "  natural "  and  "  supernatural "  methods, 
and  he  would  understand  that  by  the  former  is  meant  the 
operation  of  certain  fixed  laws,  and,  by  the  latter,  a  mode 
of  action  in  a  different  way.  But  he  would  also  and  easily 
understand  that  the  power  which  could  establish  the  laws 
of  matter  and  motion,  the  operation  of  which  the  scientist 
calls  the  natural  method,  could  equally  act  in  another  way, 
which  the  scientist  calls  the  supernatural,  but  which,  in 
the  eye  of  philosophy,  is  just  as  competent  to  the  Infinite 
Power  as  the  method  called  natural.  To  state  it  in  differ- 
ent words,  but  with  the  same  meaning,  that  which  the 
scientist  calls  the  supernatural  is  to  the  philosopher  just  as 
conceivable  and  just  as  consistent  with  the  idea  of  a  supreme 
being  as  the  order  of  what  we  call  Nature  ;  for  Nature  is 
the  phenomena  that  are  open  to  our  observation,  and  from 
which  we  deduce  the  probable  method  by  which  they  have 
been  brought  about.  It  will  never  do  to  say  that  they  could 
not  have  been  produced  by  a  cause  operating  differently 
from  a  system  of  fixed  laws  so  long  as  we  reason  from  the 
hypothesis  of  the  existence  and  attributes  of  a  Supreme 
Being.  If  we  reason  without  that  hypothesis,  we  may  per- 
suade ourselves  of  anything  or  of  nothing. 

This  idea  of  a  Supreme  Being,  possessed  of  the  attri- 
butes of  infinite  power  and  wisdom,  is  one  that  our  inquirer 
would  have  reached  as  a  rational  deduction  from  the  opera- 
tion of  a  law  (gravitation)  which  must  have  had  an  author ; 
from  the  structure  of  a  mechanism  so  designed  as  to  be 
governed  successfully  by  that  law,  and  from  the  execution 
of  the  law  through  such  enormous  spaces  that  nothing 
short  of  infinite  power  and  wisdom  could  have  produced 
the  result. 

At  this  stage  of  his  investigations,  our  inquirer  en- 
counters a  modern  scientist.  I  shall  take  the  liberty  of 
coining  convenient  names  for  these  two  interlocutors  :  call- 


310  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

ing  the  one  Sophereus,  as  representing  the  spirit  of  unpre- 
judiced research  in  the  formation  of  beliefs  without  the 
influence  of  preyious  teaching ;  and  the  other  Kosmicos,  as 
a  representative  of  the  dogmatic  school  of  evolution  and 
agnosticism. 

Sophereus  has  imparted  to  his  scientific  friend  the  con- 
clusions which  he  has  thus  far  reached,  concerning  the  ex- 
istence and  attributes  of  a  supreme  lawgiver  and  artificer, 
as  deduced  from  the  phenomena  of  the  solar  system.  The 
discussion  between  them  then  proceeds  as  follows  : 

KosMicos.  I  do  not  wish  to  convince  you  at  present  of 
my  own  views  on  this  subject,  but  I  put  before  you  a  diffi- 
culty which  you  ought  to  solve,  if  you  can,  to  your  own  satis- 
faction, before  you  proceed  farther.  You  have  learned  of  the 
law  of  gravitation ;  and  you  have  imagined  a  being  who 
has  established  this  and  other  laws  by  which  matter  is  to  be 
governed.  To  this  being  you  have  imputed  certain  per- 
sonal attributes,  which  you  call  infinite  power  and  bound- 
less wisdom.  Observe  now  that  the  laws  to  which  you 
assign  this  origin  are  of  perpetual  duration;  they  have 
operated  without  change  from  the  remotest  period  of  their 
existence  just  as  they  operate  now,  and  we  have  no  reason 
to  doubt  that  they  will  continue  to  operate  in  the  same  way 
through  the  indefinite  future.  They  constitute  the  order 
of  Nature.  Now,  you  suppose  a  Supreme  Being,  who  has 
established  these  invariable  laws,  but  has  not  left  them 
anything  to  do  ;  has  not  left  to  them  the  production  of  the 
solar  system,  but  has  specially  interposed,  and  in  a  super- 
natural mode  of  action  has  constructed  the  machine  which 
has  the  sun  for  its  center  and  the  surrounding  bodies  which 
revolve  about  it.  How  can  you  suppose  that  the  same  be- 
ing has  acted  in  different  ways?  How  can  you  suppose 
that  the  being  who  you  imagine  established  the  general 
laws  of  Nature  and  gave  to  them  a  fixed  operation  through- 
out the  universe,  so  that  they  never  would  be  suspended  or 


PLAN  OF  THE  SOLAR  SYSTEM.  311 

interrupted,  has  gone  aside  from  them,  and  made  occasional 
constructions  by  special  interpositions  of  his  power  ?  Is  it 
not  a  contradiction  to  suppose  that  an  Almighty  Being,  who 
must  have  acted  by  uniform  methods  without  reference  to 
occasions,  has  acted  on  certain  occasions  by  special  methods 
that  were  not  uniform  with  his  fixed  laws  ?  Does  not  this 
hypothesis  imply  that  his  fixed  laws  were  insufficient  for 
the  purposes  for  which  he  designed  them,  and  that  he  had 
to  resort  to  other  means  ?  How  do  you  get  over  this  diffi- 
culty ? 

SoPHEREUS.  What  you  propound  as  a  difficulty  does  not 
disturb  me.  I  understand  the  distinction  which  you  make 
between  the  natural  and  the  supernatural.  I  can  see  in  the 
solar  system  how  the  law  of  gravitation  and  all  the  other  laws 
of  motion  operate  ;  but  I  do  not  see,  nor  can  you  explain, 
how  these  laws,  or  the  laws  of  chemical  combination  or  any 
other  laws,  can  have  evolved  the  plan  of  the  solar  system 
out  of  a  mass  of  fiery  vapor.  I  can  understand  the  enact- 
ment and  establishment  of  laws  of  motion,  of  chemical  com- 
bination, and  of  the  mechanical  action  of  different  states  of 
matter  upon  each  other,  to  operate  in  fixed  and  invariable 
ways,  in  certain  conditions.  But  I  do  not  see  that  there  is 
any  interruption  or  displacement  of  these  laws,  after  they  are 
established,  when  an  end  that  is  to  be  accomplished  calls  for 
a  complex  system  of  new  objects  among  which  they  are  to 
operate.  It  is  manifest  that  the  question  is  whether  the  dif- 
ferent bodies  of  the  solar  system  have  been  formed  and  placed 
in  their  respective  positions,  according  to  a  special  design  of 
their  relative  distances,  magnitudes,  and  orbits,  or  whether 
these  are  the  results  of  the  operation  of  fixed  laws,  without 
any  special  interposition  of  a  creating  power.  Astrono- 
mers have  not  explained  how  the  latter  hypothesis  is  any- 
thing more  than  a  probable  conjecture.  It  remains  for  me 
to  consider  whether  the  hypothesis  of  a  special  interposi- 
tion, whereby  the  plan  of  the  solar  system  has  been  made,  is 


312  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

attended  with  tlie  difficulty  which  you  suggest.  We  are 
reasoning  about  a  period  of  the  remote  past  when  this 
system  of  bodies  did  not  exist,  but  when  the  general  laws 
that  were  to  govern  all  matter  may  be  supposed  to  have 
been  previously  ordained.  If  we  think  of  the  solar  system, 
conceived  and  projected  by  the  Supreme  Being,  as  a  com- 
plex mechanism  that  was  to  exist  in  Nature,  the  occasion 
would  be  one  calling  for  the  exercise  of  infinite  wisdom  and 
power.  The  production  of  such  a  mechanism,  to  answer 
any  ends  for  which  it  was  intended  that  it  should  exist,  im- 
plies attributes  that  transcend  all  our  human  experience  of 
the  qualities  of  power  and  wisdom.  That  it  was  an  occa- 
sional exercise  of  power,  in  no  way  implies  any  irregularity 
or  inconsistency  of  method,  if  the  power  was  so  exercised 
as  to  leave  all  the  general  laws  of  Nature  in  full  operation, 
so  that  there  would  be  no  clashing  between  what  you  call 
the  natural  and  the  supernatural.  I  have  first  to  ascertain 
what  was  the  probably  intended  scope  of  the  general  laws 
which  are  supposed  to  have  been  ordained  before  the  solar 
system  came  into  existence.  If  it  appears  to  have  been 
the  purpose  of  the  constructor  to  have  these"  laws  work 
out  this  system  of  bodies  without  any  special  interposition 
and  formative  skill  directly  exercised,  I  need  go  no  fur- 
ther. But  I  see  no  evidence  of  that  purpose.  No  one  has 
suggested  anything  but  a  theory  on  this  subject,  which 
is  not  supported  by  any  satisfactory  proofs.  I  am  left, 
therefore,  to  the  consideration  of  the  question  whether  an 
act  of  special  interposition,  in  the  formation  of  a  plan  obvi- 
ously calling  for  the  exercise  of  infinite  wisdom  and  power, 
is  in  any  way  inconsistent  with  the  establishment  of  a  sys- 
tem of  laws  which  were  to  operate  on  these  bodies  and 
among  them  after  they  had  come  to  exist.  My  conclusion, 
froin  what  I  have  learned  of  the  solar  system,  is,  that  in 
the  exercise  by  the  same  being  of  the  method  which  you 
call  the  natural,  and  the  exercise  of  the  method  which  you 


GRAVITATION.  313 

call  the  supernatural,  there  is  no  inconsistency ;  that  each 
of  the  fixed  laws  of  matter  and  motion  was  designed  to  have 
its  own  scope ;  and  that  each  of  them  may  well  consist, 
within  its  limitations,  with  occasional  exercises  of  power, 
for  the  production  of  objects  that  were  to  be  operated  upon 
by  the  laws,  but  of  which  they  were  not  designed  to  be  the 
producing  cause.  Thus  it  seems  to  me  to  be  a  rational 
conclusion  that  the  law  of  gravitation,  the  general  laws  of 
motion,  and  all  the  other  laws  of  matter,  which  preceded 
the  existence  of  the  solar  system,  were  not  designed  to  be 
the  agents  by  which  the  plan  of  that  system  would  be 
worked  out,  but  that  the  plan  was  so  formed  and  executed 
that  the  bodies  composing  it  would  be  subject  to  the  opera- 
tion of  laws  enacted  by  the  Infinite  Will  for  the  government 
of  all  the  forms  of  matter.  The  question  is,  whether  the 
plan  of  the  solar  system  is  due  to  the  operation  of  the  fixed 
laws,  or  to  a  special  interposition  ;  or,  to  state  it  in  an- 
other way,  whether  the  whole  of  the  phenomena,  the  plan 
and  arrangement  of  the  solar  system  included,  are  to  be 
referred  to  the  operation  of  certain  fixed  laws  as  the  pro- 
ducing agents,  or  whether  some  part  of  the  phenomena, 
namely,  the  mechanism  of  the  system,  should  be  referred  to 
the  special  interposition.  I  am  taught,  by  the  physics  on 
which  astronomers  are  now  agreed,  that  gravitation  is  a 
force  by  which  the  particles  of  matter  act  on  each  other ; 
that  every  particle  of  matter  in  the  universe  attracts  every 
other  particle  with  a  force  varying  directly  as  their  masses, 
and  inversely  as  the  square  of  the  distance  which  separates 
them.  This  I  understand  to  be  the  formula  in  which  the 
law  of  universal  gravitation  is  expressed.  But,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  illustrating  what  I  understand  to  be  the  operation 
of  this  force,  I  have  constructed  a  diagram,  in  which  two 
bodies  are  represented  as  A  and  B.  From  each  of  these 
bodies  there  radiates  in  all  directions  an  attracting  force, 
which  acts  directly  upon  every  other  body  in  the  universe. 


314 


CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 


and  which  is  represented 
in  the  diagram  by  dotted 
lines.  In  the  diagram, 
the  bodies  A  and  B  are 
first  supposed  to  be  one 
thousand  miles  apart.  A 
certain  portion  of  the  at- 
tracting rays  proceeding 
from  A  would  strike  di- 
rectly upon  B.  All  the 
other  rays  proceeding  in 
the  same  direction  from 
A  would  pass  on  either 
side  of  B  without  strik- 
ing it.  If  B  is  removed 
to  the  distance  of  two 
thousand  miles  from  A, 
the  sum  total  of  the 
attractive  force  which 
A  would  exert  upon  B 
would  be  diminished  by 
the  square  of  the  dis- 
tance, because  B  would 
intercept  just  one  fourth 
of  the  number  of  rays 
proceeding  from  A  com- 
pared with  the  number 
which  it  intercepts  when 
the  two  bodies  are  only 
one  thousand  miles  apart ; 
and  the  rays  which  B 
does  not  intercept  would 
pass  along  through  the 
ealms  of  space,  until 
they  encountered  some  other  body,  on  which  they  would 


GRAVITATION.  315 

exert  a  force  that  would  follow  the  same  law  of  diminntion. 
In  the  diagram,  the  two  bodies  A  and  B  may  be  single  par- 
ticles of  matter  or  collections  of  particles  ;  they  are  repre- 
sented as  cubes  ;  but  the  law  of  direct  action  of  the  attract- 
ing force  and  the  law  of  its  diminution  would  be  the  same 
if  the  bodies  were  spheres  or  oblongs.  The  power  of  at- 
traction which  bodies  exert  upon  each  other  resides  in 
every  individual  particle  of  matter  composing  the  body, 
and  the  attraction  wbicb  that  body  exerts  upon  another 
body  is  the  sum  total  of  the  attractions  which  proceed  from 
all  the  particles  composing  the  mass  and  which  impinge 
upon  that  other  body. 

In  the  diagram  the  two  bodies  A  and  B  are  supposed  to 
be  of  the  same  mass.  If,  as  in  the  case  of  the  sun  and  the 
earth,  one  of  the  bodies  is  of  far  greater  mass  than  the 
other,  then  the  attraction  of  the  sun  for  the  earth  is  the 
same  as  the  attraction  of  the  earth  for  the  sun,  because  the 
action  is  mutual ;  but  the  sun,  being  the  gi-eater  mass, 
tends,  by  reason  of  its  correspondingly  greater  inertia,  to 
remain  comparatively  stationary,  or,  in  other  words,  it  has 
a  greater  resistance  to  being  pulled  out  of  its  normal  po- 
sition, while  the  earth,  having  less  inertia,  is  more  easily 
deflected  from  its  straight  course  in  which  its  momentum 
tends  to  carry  it,  and  so  travels  in  an  orbit  around  the  sun, 
the  resisting  or  centrifugal  pull  of  the  earth,  due  to  its  in- 
ertia, exactly  balancing  the  inward  pull  due  to  the  mutual 
attraction.  I  understand  that,  besides  the  law  of  universal 
gravitation,,  there  are  two  fundamental  laws  of  motion.  By 
one  of  these  laws,  if  a  body  be  set  in  motion  and  be  acted 
on  by  no  other  than  the  projectile  force,  it  will  move  for- 
ward in  a  straight  line  and  with  a  uniform  velocity  for- 
ever. But  by  another  law,  if  the  moving  body  is  acted  on 
by  another  force  than  that  which  originally  projected  it  in 
a  straight  line,  it  will  deviate  from  that  line  in  the  direc- 
tion of  that  other  force  and  in  proportion  to  it.  If  A, 
15 


316  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

the  earth,  liable  to  be  drawn  toward  B,  the  sun,  by  their 
mutual  attraction,  was  originally  projected  into  space,  at 
a  certain  distance  from  the  sun,  by  a  force  which  would 
carry  it  on  in  a  straight  line,  it  would  be  acted  on  by  two 
forces  :  the  projectile  force  would  cause  it  to  move  in  a 
straight  line ;  the  force  of  the  mutual  attraction  would 
cause  it  to  deviate  from  that  line  in  the  direction  of  the 
sun.  The  result  would  be  that  the  earth  would  be  carried 
around  the  sun  in  a  circular  or  an  elliptical  orbit.  Every 
other  planet  in  the  solar  system  would  be  under  the  opera- 
tion of  the  same  compound  forces  governed  by  the  same 
laws ;  and  while  the  sun  would  exert  upon  each  of  them 
its  force  of  attraction,  and  they  would  each  exert  upon  the 
others  an  attractive  force  that  would  be  diminished  by  the 
squares  of  their  distances  from  one  another,  each  of  them 
would  be  deflected  from  the  straight  line  that  would  have 
otherwise  been  the  path  of  its  motion,  and  the  result  would 
be  a  perpetual  revolution  around  the  body  that  could  exert 
upon  each  just  the  amount  of  attraction  requisite  to  over- 
come the  projectile  force  by  which  it  was  first  put  in  motion. 

KosMicos.  You  have  made  an  ingenious  explanation 
of  the  law  of  gravitation,  which  may  or  may  not  be  cor- 
rect. But  now  let  me  understand  what  you  infer  from 
this  hypothesis,  supposing  it  to  be  true.  What  should 
have  prevented  the  law  of  gravitation  and  the  laws  of 
motion  from  working  out  this  very  system  of  bodies,  by 
operating  upon  a  mass  of  crude  matter  lying  in  the  uni- 
verse, supposing  it  to  have  been  fiery  vapor  or  anything 
else  ? 

SoPHEREUs,  I  have  thus  far  arrived,  by  the  aid  of  what 
astronomy  teaches,  at  a  complex  system  of  physical  laws, 
the  law  of  universal  gravitation,  and  the  laws  of  motion. 
I  must  suppose  that  these  laws  had  an  intelligent  author. 
I  must  suppose  that  they  were  enacted,  in  the  same  sense 
in  which  we  speak  of  any  rule  of  action  ordained  by  a 


THE  ULTIMATE  CAUSE.  317 

power  competent  to  conceive  of  it  and  to  put  it  into  execu- 
tion. To  me,  as  I  view  the  facts  of  the  solar  system,  the 
idea  that  the  law  of  gravitation  and  the  laws  of  motion  are 
to  be  regarded  as  mere  phenomena  of  matter,  or  as  quali- 
ties of  matter  according  to  which,  from  some  inherent 
condition,  it  must  act,  does  not  explain  the  solar  system. 
I  can  not  explain  to  myself  what  I  see,  without  asking 
myself  how  these  qualities  of  matter  came  to  exist.  How 
came  it  to  be  a  condition  of  all  matter  that  its  particles 
should  attract  each  other  by  a  certain  force  according  to  a 
certain  rule  ?  How  came  it  to  be  a  law  of  motion  that 
bodies  projected  into  space  should  continue  to  move  on 
forever  in  a  straight  line,  unless  deviated  from  that  line  by 
some  other  force  ?  To  say  that  things  happen,  but  that 
no  power  ever  commanded  them  to  happen ;  that  things 
occur  because  they  do  occur,  and  not  because  some  power 
has  ordained  that  they  shall  occur,  is  to  me  an  inconceiv- 
able kind  of  reasoning,  if  it  be  reasoning  at  all.  Because 
men  act  or  profess  to  act  upon  certain  principles  of  moral 
conduct,  I  can  not  suppose  that  justice,  and  truth,  and 
mercy  are  mere  phenomena  of  human  conduct,  that  they 
never  had  any  origin  as  moral  laws  in  the  will  of  a  law- 
giver. For  the  same  reason  I  can  not  suppose  that  the 
physical  laws  of  matter,  stupendous  in  their  scope,  and  of 
unerring  certainty  in  their  operation,  did  not  proceed  from 
an  enacting  authority.  In  short,  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
conception  of  power,  as  something  independent  of  the 
qualities  of  substance,  is  a  logical  necessity. 

KosMicos.  I  am  not  now  trying  to  persuade  you  that 
the  law  of  gravitation  and  the  laws  of  motion  did  not  have 
an  intelligent  author.  For  the  purposes  of  the  argument, 
I  will  concede  that  they  were  enacted,  as  you  term  it.  You 
have  explained  your  understanding  of  the  operation  of  these 
laws  as  they  are  expressed  in  the  formula  given  by  astrono- 
mers, and  for  the  present  I  will  assume  that  they  operate 


318  CKEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

in  some  sucli  way.  I  will  also  concede  that  the  idea  of 
power  in  the  abstract,  as  something  independent  of  the 
qualities  of  substance,  is  necessary  to  the  explanation  of  all 
physical  phenomena.  But  I  now  recall  your  attention  to 
the  point  which  I  originally  suggested.  Explain  to  me 
how  it  has  happened  that  the  being  who  you  suppose  estab- 
lished certain  laws  for  the  goyernment  of  all  matter  has 
not  allowed  those  laws  to  eyolve  out  of  diffused  matter  cer- 
tain bodies  which  we  find  grouped  together  in  the  universe, 
but  has  specially  interposed  by  another  act,  and  constructed 
this  system  of  bodies  without  the  agency  of  his  own  laws. 
All  that  we  know  about  the  law  of  gravitation  and  the  laws 
of  motion  we  derive  from  observing  the  actions  of  these 
bodies  which  compose  the  solar  system.  We  infer  the  ex- 
istence of  these  laws  from  the  actions  of  these  bodies.  Now 
tell  me  how  you  suppose  that  the  same  being  who  ordained 
these  laws  as  fixed  conditions  to  which  matter  was  to  be 
subjected,  and  made  them  to  operate  upon  all  matter, 
whether  in  a  crude  and  unformed  state  or  after  it  had  be- 
come organized  into  bodies  of  definite  shapes  and  dimen- 
sions, did  not  rely  upon  these  inherent  conditions  of  matter 
to  produce  those  shapes  and  dimensions,  but  went  to  work 
by  special  interposition,  and  produced  the  mechanism  of 
the  solar  system  as  a  human  artificer  would  make  a  machine 
of  a  corresponding  character. 

SoPHEREUS.  We  must  take  things  in  a  certain  order.  I 
understand  you  to  concede,  for  the  present,  that  the  laws 
of  gravitation  and  motion  must,  or  may,  have  existed  before 
the  sun  and  the  planets  were  formed.  We  are  agreed,  then, 
that  power  has  an  existence  anterior  to  and  separate  from 
the  qualities  of  substance.  What,  then,  is  the  difficulty  at- 
tending the  hypothesis  that  the  Infinite  Power,  which  de- 
vised and  established  the  laws  of  gravitation  and  motion 
before  the  bodies  of  the  solar  system  were  formed,  so  fash- 
ioned and  distributed  those  bodies  that  while  each  of  them 


PLAN  OF  THE  SOLAR  SYSTEM.       319 

shall  exert  upon  every  other  a  certain  amount  of  direct  at- 
traction, that  attraction  shall  diminish  in  a  certain  fixed 
ratio,  as  the  distance  between  them  increases  ?  We  can  not 
suppose  that  the  relative  magnitudes,  weights,  and  dis- 
tances of  these  bodies  were  accidental,  or  that  they  resulted 
from  the  property  of  attraction  that  was  given  to  the  parti- 
cles of  matter  of  which  they  are  composed.  That  property 
of  mutual  attraction  became  at  some  time  a  fixed  condition 
of  all  matter,  but  it  will  not  account  for  the  formation  of  a 
system  of  bodies  so  adjusted  that  the  attracting  force  will 
act  among  them  by  a  specific  law,  by  the  operation  of  which 
they  will  be  prevented  from  exerting  on  each  other  an  ex- 
cessive amount  of  such  force,  or  any  amount  but  that  which 
is  exactly  needful  to  preserve  their  relative  distances  from 
each  other.  Let  it  be  supposed  that  the  property  of  at- 
traction was  impressed  upon  all  the  particles  of  matter  in 
the  universe,  and  then  that  the  Infinite  Power,  abstaining 
from  all  farther  action,  and  without  forming  and  arranging 
the  bodies  of  the  solar  system  upon  any  intentional  plan, 
left  all  that  plan  to  be  worked  out  by  that  property  of  mat- 
ter ;  what  reason  have  we  to  conclude  that  the  law  of  grav- 
itation would,  as  the  sole  efficient  cause,  have  produced  just 
exactly  this  complex  piece  of  mechanism,  so  wonderfully 
adjusted  ?  What  reason  have  we  to  conclude  that  the  prop- 
erty of  attraction,  although  ordained  as  an  inherent  quality 
of  all  matter,  would  not,  if  left  without  any  special  inter- 
position, have  resulted  in  some  very  different  arrangement 
and  disposition  of  the  matter  lying  in  the  space  now  occu- 
pied by  the  solar  system  ? 

KosMicos.  Give  me  your  idea  of  the  condition  which  is 
called  *' chaos,"  and  I  will  then  explain  to  you  why  it  is 
that  you  do  not  do  justice  to  the  scientific  distinction  be- 
tween the  natural  and  the  supernatural  method  by  which 
things  have  been  produced  as  we  see  them. 

SoPHEKEUS.   I  presume  you  do  not  mean  to  ask  how  I 


320  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

suppose  chaotic  matter  came  to  exist.  Its  origin  is  one 
thing — its  condition  is  another.  In  regard  to  its  condition^, 
it  seems  very  plain  that  there  was  a  period  when  diffused 
matter  had  not  received  the  impress  of  the  qualities  or  heen 
subjected  to  the  laws  which  we  now  recognize.  Take  the 
Mosaic  hypothesis,  where  it  speaks  of  the  earth,  for  exam- 
ple, as  "without  form  and  yoid."  In  this  terse  expression, 
there  is  embraced  the  idea  of  a  condition  of  matter  without 
qualities,  properties,  or  laws  ;  lying  in  an  utterly  crude 
state,  waiting  to  receive  the  impress  of  the  divine  will. 
The  laws  of  motion  have  not  begun  to  operate  upon  it ;  the 
laws  of  chemical  combination  have  not  been  applied  to  it. 
It  is  a  rational  conclusion  that  this  was  the  condition  of 
things  in  that  remote  period  of  eternity  before  the  solar  sys- 
tem was  formed.  Chaos,  then,  was  the  condition  of  prime- 
val matter  before  it  had  received  the  fixed  properties  that 
were  afterward  to  belong  to  it,  and  before  the  laws  that 
were  ever  afterward  to  govern  it  had  been  ordained.  Lying 
in  this  utterly  crude  state,  without  tendencies,  without 
combinations,  without  definite  motion,  floating  in  the  uni- 
verse without  fixed  form  or  qualities,  it  awaits  the  action 
of  the  Infinite  Power.  It  pleases  that  power,  out  of  its  il- 
limitable resources,  to  bestow  upon  this  chaotic  matter  cer- 
tain properties,  and  to  subject  it  to  certain  laws.  One  of 
these  properties  is  that  its  particles  shall  attract  one  another 
by  a  certain  force  ;  one  of  these  laws  is  that  this  force  shall 
operate  by  an  invariable  and  fixed  rule  of  direct  action,  and 
by  an  invariable  and  fixed  rule  of  diminution,  according  to 
the  distance  of  the  particles  from  each  other  ;  and  another 
law  is  that  a  body  projected  into  space,  by  any  force, 
shall  continue  to  move  in  a  straight  line  until  and  unless 
it  is  deflected  from  that  line  by  some  other  force.  There 
are,  too,  chemical  properties  belonging  to  matter  as  we 
know  it,  by  which  it  takes  on  certain  combinations  and 
undergoes  modifications  and  arrangements  of  its  particles. 


PLAN  IS  CREATION.  321 

All  these  properties,  qualities,  and  laws — these  unavoidable 
methods  of  action — must  have  been  imposed  upon  the  cha- 
otic matter  at  some  time  by  a  power  competent  to  establish 
them,  and  to  put  them  in  operation.  But  the  laws  and 
the  methods  of  their  operation  do  not  account  for  the  PLAif 
on  which  the  solar  system  has  been  formed,  consisting  of 
different  bodies  of  such  shapes,  dimensions,  and  relative 
distances,  that  the  laws,  when  applied  to  theip,  will  pro- 
duce the  wonderfully  exact  and  perpetual  movements  which 
the  telescope  reveals.  That  plan"  is  a  creation,  for  which 
we  must  look  to  something  more  than  the  laws  and  proper- 
ties of  matter  ;  and  we  can  only  find  it  in  the  will  and  pur- 
poses of  the  infinite  artificer  who  devised  the  laws  by  which 
this  mechanism  was  to  be  governed  after  it  had  been  made, 
and  who  has  so  made  it  that  it  would  be  governed  by  them. 

KosMicos.  I  do  not  see  that  you  have  yet  reached  a 
stronger  ground  on  which  to  rest  the  h3rpo thesis  of  special 
interposition  than  that  on  which  is  based  the  hypothesis 
which  imputes  the  formation  of  the  solar  system  to  certain 
fixed  laws  operating  upon  crude  matter  not  yet  formed  into 
definite  shapes  or  placed  in  certain  relative  positions.  You 
will  have  to  adduce  some  proof  that  has  a  stronger  tendency 
to  exclude  the  supposition  that  the  mechanism  of  the  solar 
system  was  produced  by  the  laws  of  matter  and  motion 
working  upon  some  material  that  lay  in  the  condition  which 
you  have  described  as  "chaos." 

SoPHEEEUs.  Let  us,  then,  look  a  little  farther  into  some 
of  the  details  of  this  vast  machine.  Take  one  that  is  most 
obvious,  and  that  lies  the  nearest  to  us  ;  I  mean  the  moon, 
which  accompanies  our  earth  as  its  satellite.  The  most  re- 
markable thing  about  the  motion  of  the  moon  is  the  fact 
that  she  makes  one  revolution  on  her  axis  in  the  same  time 
that  she  takes  to  revolve  around  the  earth,  and  consequently 
she  always  presents  to  us  the  same  face,  and  her  other  side 
is  never  seen  by  human  eyes.     How  came  this  to  be  the 


322  CREATION  OE  EVOLUTION? 

case  ?  How  came  this  to  be  the  adjustment  of  the  two 
motions,  the  axial  revolution  of  the  moon  and  her  revolu- 
tion around  the  earth,  causing  her  always  to  present  to  us 
the  same  side  ?  It  is  said  by  astronomers  that  the  two  mo- 
tions are  so  exactly  adjusted  to  each  other  that  the  longer 
axis  of  the  moon  always  points  to  the  earth,  without  the 
slightest  variation.  It  is  conceded,  as  I  understand,  to  be 
infinitely  improbable  that  this  adjustment  was  the  result  of 
chance.  A  cause  for  it  is  therefore  to  be  found.  Where 
are  we  to  look  for  that  cause,  unless  we  look  for  it  in  the 
will  and  design  of  the  Creator,  who  established  it  for  some 
si^ecial  purpose  ? 

KosMicos.  You  are  aware  that  there  is  a  physical  ex- 
planation of  this  phenomenon  which  accounts  for  it  with- 
out the  special  design.  This  explanation  is  that  the  moon 
was  once  in  a  partially  fluid  state,  and  that  she  rotated  on 
her  axis  in  a  period  different  from  the  present  one.  In 
such  a  condition,  the  attraction  of  the  earth  would  produce 
great  tides  in  the  fluid  substance  of  the  moon ;  this  at- 
traction, combined  with  the  centrifugal  force  of  the  moon's 
rotation  on  her  own  axis,  would  cause  a  friction,  and  this 
friction  would  retard  the  rate  of  her  axial  rotation,  until  it 
became  coincident  with  the  rate  of  her  revolution  around 
the  earth.  It  is  highly  improbable  that  the  moon  was 
originally  set  in  rotation  on  her  axis  with  just  the  same  ve- 
locity with  which  she  was  made  to  revolve  around  the  earth. 
This  improbability  is  based  on  the  ellipticity  of  the  moon's 
orbit,  which  is  caused  by  the  attraction  of  the  sun.  The 
mean  distance  of  the  moon  from  the  earth  is  240,300  miles  ; 
her  smallest  possible  distance  is  221,000  miles ;  and  the 
greatest  possible  distance  is  259,600.  The  usual  oscillation 
between  these  extremes  is  about  13,000  miles  on  each  side 
of  the  mean  distance  of  240,300.  The  diameter  of  the 
moon  is  2,160  miles,  or  less  than  two  sevenths  of  the  earth's 
diameter.    In  volume  she  is  about  one  fiftieth  as  large  as 


THE  MOON'S  REVOLUTION.  323 

the  earth,  but  her  density,  or  the  specific  gravity  of  her 
material,  is  supposed  to  be  a  little  more  than  half  of  that 
of  our  globe  ;  and  her  weight  is  about  three  and  a  half  times 
the  weight  of  the  same  bulk  of  water.  When  she  is  nearest 
to  the  sun,  the  superior  attraction  of  that  body  tends  to 
draw  her  out  of  her  circular  orbit  around  the  earth  ;  when 
she  is  farthest  from  the  sun,  this  attraction  is  diminished, 
and  thus  her  terrestrial  orbit  becomes  slightly  elliptical. 
But  there  is  another  attraction  to  be  taken  into  account. 
This  other  attraction,  in  her  former  fluid  condition,  has 
given  her  the  shape,  not  of  a  perfect  sphere,  but  of  an  ellip- 
soid, or  an  elongated  body  with  three  unequal  axes.  The 
shortest  of  her  axes  is  that  around  which  she  rotates  ;  the 
next  longest  is  that  which  points  in  the  direction  in  which 
she  is  moving ;  and  the  longest  of  all  points  toward  the 
earth.  This  shape  of  the  moon,  resulting  from  the  earth's 
attraction,  has  been  produced  by  drawing  the  matter  of  the 
moon  which  is  nearest  to  the  earth  toward  the  earth,  and 
by  the  centrifugal  force  which  tends  to  throw  outward  the 
matter  farthest  from  the  earth.  The  substance  of  the 
moon  being  a  liquid,  so  as  to  yield  freely,  she  would  be 
elongated  in  the  direction  of  the  earth.  But  if  she  was 
originally  set  in  motion  on  her  own  axis  at  precisely  the 
same  rate  with  which  she  was  made  to  revolve  around  the 
earth,  the  correspondence  between  the  two  motions  could 
not  have  been  kept  up  ;  her  axial  rotation  would  have  varied, 
by  reason  of  the  fact  that  her  relative  distance  from  the  sun 
and  the  earth  varies  with  the  ellipticity  of  her  orbit  around 
the  earth,  and  thus  the  two  motions  would  not  correspond. 
But  if  we  allow  for  the  attraction  of  the  earth  upon  a  liquid 
or  semi-liquid  body,  producing  for  the  moon  an  elongated 
shape,  her  axial  rotation  would,  if  the  two  motions  were  in 
the  beginning  very  near  together,  vary  with  her  revolutions 
around  the  earth,  and  the  correspondence  between  the  two 
motions  would  be  kept  up.     Here,  then,  you  have  a  physi- 


324  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

cal  explanation  of  tbe  phenomenon  which  strikes  you  as 
so  remarkable — a  result  brought  about  by  natural  causes, 
without  the  supposition  of  what  you  call  intentional  design, 
or  formative  skill  directly  exercised  by  a  supernatural  inter- 
position. 

SoPHEEEUS.  This  is  a  yery  plausible  theory,  but  it  all 
depends  upon  two  assumptions  :  First,  it  assumes  it  to  be 
extremely  improbable  that  the  two  motions  were  aborigi- 
nally made  to  correspond,  by  an  intentional  adjustment  of 
the  moon's  weight,  dimensions,  and  shape,  upon  such  a 
plan  that  the  laws  of  gravitation  and  movement  would  keep 
the  two  motions  in  exact  correspondence.  Why  should  not 
the  rates  of  movement  have  been  originally  designed  and 
put  in  execution  as  we  find  them  ?  You  anticipate  the  an- 
swer to  this  question  by  another  assumption,  namely,  that 
the  substance  of  the  moon  was  at  first  in  a  fluid  or  semi- 
fluid state,  so  that  she  owed  her  present  shape  to  the  effect 
of  the  earth's  attraction,  and  the  centrifugal  tendency  of 
its  most  distant  part  to  be  thrown  out  of  the  line  of  its  mo- 
tion. I  should  be  glad  to  have  you  explain  why  it  is  ex- 
tremely improbable  that  the  Creator  planned  this  part  of 
the  solar  system,  the  earth  and  its  satellite,  and  so  adjusted 
the  dimensions,  shapes,  and  weights  of  each  of  them,  and 
fixed  the  rates  of  revolution  of  the  satellite,  that  the  laws 
of  attraction  and  motion  would  find  a  mechanism  which 
they  would  keep  perpetually  in  operation,  and  thus  preserve 
a  constant  relation  between  the  moon's  axial  rotation  and 
her  revolution  around  the  earth.  I  have  thus  far  learned 
to  regard  the  probable  methods  of  the  Creator  somewhat 
differently  from  those  which  you  scientists  ascribe  to  him. 
Most  of  you,  I  observe,  have  a  strong  tendency  to  regard 
the  Deity  as  having  no  specific  plan  in  the  production  of 
anything,  which  plan  he  directly  executed ;  and,  so  far  as 
you  regard  a  First  Cause  as  the  producing  cause  of  phe- 
nomena, you  limit  its  activity  to  the  establishment  of  certain 


INTENTIONAL  ADJUSTMENT.  325 

fixed  laws,  and  explain  all  phenomena  upon  the  hypothesis 
that  the  Supreme  Being — if  you  admit  one — made  no  special 
interpositions  of  his  will  and  power  in  any  direction,  after  he 
had  established  his  system  of  general  laws.  But  to  me  it 
seems  that  the  weight  of  probability  is  entirely  against  your 
hypothesis.  In  this  particular  case  of  which  we  have  been 
speaking,  that  of  the  moon's  revolution,  the  supposed  im- 
probability of  an  original  and  intentional  adjustment  of  the 
two  motions  turns  altogether  on  the  argument  that  if  they 
had  been  so  adjusted  at  the  beginning  they  would  not  have 
kept  on,  and  this  argument  is  supported  by  the  assumption 
that  the  moon  was  at  first  a  mass  of  fluid.  I  do  not  under- 
stand this  mode  of  making  facts  to  support  theories ;  and 
I  wish  you  would  explain  to  me  why,  in  this  particular  in- 
stance, the  inference  of  a  divine  and  intentional  plan  in  the 
structure  of  this  part  of  the  solai*  system  is  so  extremely 
improbable.  To  me  it  seems  so  obvious  a  piece  of  invented 
mechanism,  that  I  can  not  avoid  the  conclusion  that  it  was 
the  intentional  work  of  a  constructor,  any  more  than  I 
could  if  I  were  to  find  a  piece  of  mechanism  under  circum- 
stances which  indicated  that  it  was  produced  by  human 
hands. 

KosMicos.  You  do  not  even  yet  do  justice  to  the  sci- 
entific method  of  reasoning.  The  deductions  of  science — 
the  conclusions  which  the  scientist  draws  from  the  phe- 
nomena of  Nature — rest  upon  the  postulate  of  fixed  laws  of 
Nature,  which  never  change,  and  which  have  not  been  varied 
by  any  supernatural  interference.  We  mean  by  a  super- 
natural cause  one  which  is  not  uniformly  in  operation,  or 
which  operates  in  some  way  different  from  the  fixed  laws 
which  we  have  deduced  from  the  observed  order  of  the  phe- 
nomena that  we  have  studied  and  found  to  be  invariable. 
We  adopt  this  distinction  between  the  natural  and  the  su- 
pernatural because  the  observable  phenomena  of  Nature  do 
not  furnish  any  means  of  discovering  as  a  fact  the  operation 


326  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

of  anything  but  the  fixed  laws,  or  any  cause  which  has 
acted  in  a  different  way.  Let  us  now  apply  this  to  the 
phenomena  which  we  have  been  considering — the  compo- 
sition and  arrangement  of  the  solar  system.  What  do  we 
find  ?  We  find  a  system  of  bodies  in  the  movements  of 
which  we  detect  certain  fixed  laws  operating  invariably  in 
the  same  way.  When  the  question  is  asked.  How  were  these 
bodies  produced  ?  we  have  no  means  of  reaching  a  conclu- 
sion except  by  reasoning  upon  the  operation  of  the  forces 
which  these  laws  disclose,  working  on  the  primordial  mat- 
ter out  of  which  the  bodies  became  formed.  It  is  for  this 
reason  that,  in  accounting  for  their  existence,  we  speak  of 
the  method  of  their  formation  as  the  natural,  in  contra- 
distinction to  some  other  method  which  we  call  the  super- 
natural ;  by  which  latter  term  we  mean  some  mode  in  which 
there  has  been  a  power  exerted  differently  from  the  estab- 
lished and  fixed  agency  of  the  laws  of  matter,  which  con- 
stitute all  that  we  have  ever  discovered.  The  nebular  hy- 
pothesis affords  a  good  illustration  of  the  distinction  which 
I  am  endeavoring  to  show  you,  whether  it  is  well  established 
or  not,  or  is  ever  likely  to  be.  It  supposes  that  there  was 
a  mass  of  fiery  vapor,  floating  in  the  space  now  occupied 
by  the  solar  system.  Under  the  operation  of  the  laws  of 
gravitation  and  motion,  of  mechanical  forces  and  chemical 
combination,  this  crude  matter  becomes  consolidated  and 
formed  into  the  different  bodies  known  to  us  as  the  sun  and 
the  planets,  and  the  laws  which  thus  formed  them  continue 
to  operate  to  keep  them  in  the  fixed  relations  to  each  other 
which  resulted  from  the  process  of  their  formation.  Whether 
as  a  matter  of  fact  the  solar  system  was  formed  in  this  way, 
this,  or  some  other  mode  of  operation  through  the  action  of 
certain  established  laws  operating  upon  primeval  matter,  is 
what  we  call  the  natural  method,  in  opposition  to  the  super- 
natural ;  and  we  can  not  discover  the  supernatural  method, 
because  the  closest  and  most  extensive  investigations  never 


THE  PROBABLE  TRUTH.  327 

enable  us  to  find  in  nature  any  method  of  operation  but 
that  which  acts  in  a  fixed  and  invariable  way. 

SoPHEREUS.  What  you  have  now  said  brings  me  to  a 
question  that  I  have  all  along  desired  to  ask  you  :  How  do 
you  know  that  the  Infinite  Power  never  acts,  or  never  has 
acted,  in  any  way  different  from  the  established  order  of 
Nature  ?  Is  science  able  to  determine  this  ?  If  it  is  not,  it 
must  be  for  philosophy  to  consider  whether  there  can  have 
been,  or  probably  has  been,  in  operation  at  any  time  any 
cause  other  than  those  fixed  laws  of  Nature  which  the  sci- 
entist is  able  to  deduce  from  observable  phenomena.  Be- 
cause science  can  only  discover  certain  fixed  laws  as  the 
forces  governing  the  bodies  which  compose  the  solar  system, 
or  governing  the  materials  of  which  they  are  supposed  to 
be  made,  it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  a  philosopher  is  pre- 
cluded from  deducing,  by  a  proper  method  of  reasoning 
upon  a  study  of  the  solar  system,  the  probable  truth  that 
its  mechanism  was  specially  planned  and  executed  by  a 
special  act  of  the  creating  power.  The  degree  to  which 
this  probability  rises — whether  it  rises  higher  in  the  scale 
than  any  other  hypothesis — must  depend  upon  the  inquiry 
whether  any  other  hypothesis  will  better  account  for  the 
existence  of  this  great  object,  with  its  enormous  mechanism, 
its  adjustments,  and  its  unerring  movements.  I  must  say, 
from  what  I  have  learned  of  this  planetary  system,  with  the 
sun  as  its  center,  viewed  as  a  mechanism,  that  I  can  con- 
ceive of  no  hypothesis  concerning  its  origin  and  formation 
which  compares  in  probability  with  the  hypothesis  that  it 
was  directly  and  specially  created,  as  we  know  it,  by  the 
Infinite  Artificer. 

KosMicos.  Pray,  tell  me  what  you  mean  by  an  act  of 
creation  ?  Did  you  or  any  other  man  ever  see  one  ?  Can 
you  tell  what  creation  is  ? 

SoPHEREUS.  I  think  that  your  question  can  be  answered. 
Creation  is  the  act  of  giving  existence  to  something  that 


328  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

did  not  previously  exist.  We  see  such  acts  performed  by 
men,  very  frequently,  so  that  we  do  not  hesitate  to  speak 
of  the  product  as  a  created  thing.  We  do  not  see  acts  of 
creation  performed  by  the  Infinite  Power,  but  it  is  surely 
not  unphilosophical  to  suppose  that  what  can  be  and  is 
done  by  finite  human  faculties,  can  be  and  has  been  done 
by  the  infinite  faculties  of  the  Deity,  and  done  upon  a  scale 
and  in  a  perfection  that  transcend  everything  that  human 
power  has  produced.  The  sense  in  which  I  have  been  led 
to  conceive  of  the  solar  system  as  a  creation  is  the  same  as 
that  by  which  I  represent  to  myself  the  production,  by  hu- 
man power  and  skill,  of  some  physical  object  which  never 
existed  before,  such  as  a  machine,  a  statue,  a  picture,  a  pyra- 
mid, or  an  obelisk  ;  any  concrete  object  which,  whether  or 
not  new  of  its  kind,  did  not  as  an  individual  object  pre- 
viously exist.  In  weighing  the  probabilities  as  to  the  mode 
in  which  the  solar  system  came  to  exist,  the  reasons  why 
the  idea  of  its  special  creation  stands  by  far  the  highest  in 
the  scale  are  these  :  1.  There  must  have  been  a  period 
when  this  great  object  in  nature  did  not  exist,  and  there- 
fore it  must  have  been  caused  to  exist.  2.  The  necessary 
hypothesis  of  a  causing  power  leads  inevitably  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  power  was  adequate  to  the  production  of  a 
system  of  bodies  so  proportioned  and  arranged  that  they 
would  act  on  each  other  by  certain  fixed  rules.  3.  The 
causing  or  creating  power  must  have  conceived  the  propor- 
tions and  arrangements  of  the  different  bodies  as  a  plan, 
and  must  have  executed  that  plan  according  to  the  concep- 
tion. 4.  While  as  a  theory  we  can  represent  to  ourselves 
that  the  causing  power  established  certain  laws  of  matter 
and  motion,  which  would  by  their  fixed  operation  on  crude 
substances  lying  in  the  universe  produce  this  system  of 
bodies  without  any  preconceived  and  predetermined  plan, 
without  any  occasional  or  special  interposition,  yet  that  the 
system,  as  we  find  it,  is  a  product  of  such  a  nature  as  to 


REQUIREMENTS  OF  THE  CASE.  "329 

have  called  for  and  required  the  special  interposition  of  a 
formative  will.  For,  if  we  proceed  upon  the  hypothesis 
that  this  enormous  and  exact  mechanism  was  nothing  but 
the  product  of  certain  pre-established  laws  operating  on 
crude  matter,  without  direct  and  special  interposition  ex- 
erted in  the  execution  of  a  formed  design,  we  have  to  ob- 
tain some  definite  conception,  and  to  find  some  proof  of  a 
method  by  which  these  laws  can  have  operated  to  produce 
this  system  of  bodies  exactly  as  we  know  them  to  be  pro- 
portioned and  arranged.  Astronomical  science,  and  all 
other  science,  has  not  discovered,  or  even  suggested,  any 
method  by  which  this  result  could  have  been  brought  about, 
without  a  special  act  of  creation  in  the  execution  of  an 
original  design.  On  the  other  hand,  the  hypothesis  of  a 
special  interposition  in  the  execution  of  a  preconceived 
plan  of  construction  is  the  most  rational,  the  most  in  ac- 
cordance with  probability,  because  it  best  meets  the  require- 
ments of  the  case.  These  requirements  were  that  the  pro- 
portions, arrangements,  and  relations  of  the  different  bodies 
composing  one  grand  mechanism,  should  be  such  that  the 
laws  of  gravitation  and  motion  would  operate  upon  and 
among  them  so  as  to  keep  them  in  uniform  and  unvarying 
movement. 

KosMicos.  Very  well.  You  have  now  come  to  the 
end  of  your  reasoning.  Tell  me,  then,  why  it  is  not  just 
as  rational  a  supposition  that  the  Deity  conceived  of  the 
plan  of  the  solar  system  as  a  product  that  would  result, 
and  that  he  intended  should  result,  from  the  operation  of 
his  fixed  laws  of  matter  and  motion,  and  then  left  it  to  the 
unerring  certainty  of  their  operation  to  produce  the  mech- 
anism by  the  process  of  gradual  evolution  ? 

SoPHEREUS.  The  being  who  is  supposed  to  hold  and 
exercise  supreme  power  over  the  universe,  holds  a  power 
to  execute,  by  direct  and  special  creation,  any  design  which 
he  conceives  and  proposes  to  accomplish.    I  am  prepared  to 


330  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

concede  that  the  process  of  gradual  evolution  can  produce 
and  apparently  has  produced  some  results.  But  when  we 
are  looking  for  the  probable  methods  of  the  Deity  in  the 
production  of  such  a  mechanism  as  the  solar  system,  we 
must  recognize  the  superior  probability  of  the  direct 
method,  because  the  indirect  method  which  you  describe 
as  gradual  evolution  does  not  seem  adequate  to  the  produc- 
tion of  such  a  system  of  bodies.  If  we  could  obtain  facts 
which  could  have  any  tendency  to  show  that,  without  any 
special  interposition,  the  mechanism  of  the  solar  system,  or 
any  part  of  it,  is  a  mere  result  of  the  working  of  the  laws 
of  gravitation  and  motion  upon  a  mass  of  crude  matter,  we 
might  yield  assent  to  the  probability  of  that  occurrence. 
But  of  course  we  have  no  such  facts  ;  we  have  nothing  but 
theories ;  and  therefore  there  appears  nothing  to  exclude 
the  probable  truth  of  a  special  creation. 

KosMicos.  We  shall  not  convince  each  other.  You 
have  stated  your  conclusions  concerning  the  solar  system 
fairly  enough,  and  I  have  endeavored  to  answer  them.  But 
now  let  me  understand  how  you  propose  to  apply  them  to 
other  departments  of  Nature,  in  which  we  have  means  of 
closer  investigation.  You  will  find  it  very  diflBcult,  I  im- 
agine, to  maintain  that  every  organism,  every  plant,  ani- 
mal, fish,  insect,  or  bird,  is  a  special  creation,  or  even  that 
man  himself  is. 

SoPHEREUS.  Let  me  state  for  myself  just  what  my  con- 
clusions are  in  regard  to  the  solar  system.  You  will  then 
know  what  the  convictions  are  with  which  I  shall  come  to 
the  study  of  other  departments.  I  have  arrived  at  the 
conception  of  an  Infinite  Being  having  the  power  to  create 
anything  that  seems  to  him  good  ;  and  I  have  experienced 
no  difiiculty  in  conceiving  what  an  act  of  creation  is.  I 
have  also  reached  the  conviction  that  there  is  one  great 
object  in  Nature,  the  existence  of  which  I  can  not  account 
for  without  the  hypothesis  of  some  special  act  of  creation. 


NEWTON'S  REASONING.  331 

Whether  I  shall  find  this  to  be  the  case  in  regard  to  every 
other  object  in  Nature,  I  can  not  now  tell.  Perhaps,  as 
many  of  these  objects  are  nearer  to  us,  and  more  within 
our  powers  of  investigation,  the  result  may  be  different. 
I  shall  endeavor  to  keep  my  mind  open  to  the  necessary 
discriminations  which  facts  may  disclose.  Possibly  I  may 
find  reason  to  reverse  the  conclusions  at  which  I  have 
arrived  in  regard  to  the  solar  system,  if  I  find  that  the 
hypothesis  of  evolution  is  fairly  sustained  by  other  phe- 
nomena. 

Note. — Newton,  whose  reasoning  powers  have  certainly  not  been  sur- 
passed by  those  of  any  other  philosopher,  ancient  or  modem,  not  only 
deduced  the  existence  of  a  personal  God  from  the  phenomena  of  Nature, 
but  he  felt  no  difficulty  in  ascribing  to  the  Deity  those  personal  attributes 
which  the  phenomena  of  Nature  show  that  he  must  possess,  because  with- 
out them  "  all  that  diversity  of  natural  things  which  we  find  suited  to  dif- 
ferent times  and  places "  could  not  have  been  produced.  They  could,  he 
reasons,  "  arise  from  nothing  but  the  ideas  and  will  of  a  Being  necessarily 
existing."  Newton  does  indeed  say  that  all  our  notions  of  God  are  taken 
from  the  ways  of  mankind  ;  but  this  is  by  way  of  allegory  and  similitude. 
There  is  a  likeness,  but  not  a  perfect  likeness.  There  is  therefore  no 
necessity  for  ascribing  to  God  anthropomorphic  attributes,  because  the 
enlargement  of  the  faculties  and  powers  to  superhuman  and  boundless 
attributes  takes  them  out  of  the  category  of  anthropomorphic  qualities  and 
capacities.  Tn  his  "Mathematical  Principles  of  Natural  Philosophy," 
Newton  had  occasion  to  treat  of  the  theory  of  vortices,  as  a  hypothesis  by 
which  the  formation  of  the  solar  system  is  to  be  explained.  The  "  General 
Scholium,"  by  which  he  concludes  the  third  book  of  his  "  Principia,"  lays 
down  the  masterly  reasoning  by  which  he  maintains  that  the  bodies  of  the 
solar  system,  while  they  persevere  in  their  orbits  by  the  mere  laws  of 
gravity,  could  by  no  means  have  at  first  derived  the  regular  position  of  the 
orbits  themselves  from  those  laws.  I  had  written  the  whole  of  the  pre- 
ceding chapter  on  the  origin  of  the  solar  system  just  as  I^have  printed  it, 
before  I  looked  into  the  "  Principia  "  to  see  what  confirmation  might  be 
derived  from  Newton's  speculations.  I  found  that  while  I  had  not  included 
the  comets  in  my  examination  of  the  solar  system,  but  had  confined  myself 
to  the  bodies  that  are  at  all  times  within  the  reach  of  the  telescope,  the 
same  deductions  are  re-enforced  by  the  comets,  eccentric  as  are  the  orbits 
through  which  they  range  into  and  out  of  our  system.     I  quote  the  entire 


332  CREATIOl^  OR  EVOLUTION? 

Scholium,  as  given  in  Motte's  English  translation  of  the  "  Principia  "  from 
the  Latin  in  which  Newton  wrote,  published  with  a  Life  by  Chittenden,  at 
New  York,  in  the  year  1848. 

"GENERAL  SCHOLIUM. 

"The  hypothesis  of  vortices  is  pressed  with  many  diffi- 
culties. That  every  planet  by  a  radius  drawn  to  the  sun 
may  describe  areas  proportional  to  the  times  of  description, 
the  periodic  times  of  the  several  parts  of  the  vortices  should 
observe  the  duplicate  proportion  of  their  distances  from 
the  sun ;  but  that  the  periodic  times  of  the  planets  may 
obtain  the  sesquiplicate  proportion  of  their  distances  from 
the  sun,  the  periodic  times  of  the  parts  of  the  vortex  ought 
to  be  in  the  sesquiplicate  proportion  of  their  distances. 
That  the  smaller  vortices  may  maintain  their  lesser  revo- 
lutions about  Saturn,  Jupiter,  and  other  planets,  and 
swim  quietly  and  undisturbed  in  the  greater  vortex  of  the 
sun,  the  periodic  times  of  the  parts  of  the  sun's  vortex 
should  be  equal ;  but  the  rotation  of  the  sun  and  planets 
about  their  axes,  which  ought  to  correspond  with  the  mo- 
tions of  their  vortices,  recede  far  from  all  these  proportions. 
The  motions  of  the  comets  are  exceedingly  regular,  are 
governed  by  the  same  laws  with  the  motions  of  the  planets, 
and  can  by  no  means  be  accounted  for  by  the  hypothesis 
of  vortices  ;  for  comets  are  carried  with  very  eccentric 
motions  through  all  parts  of  the  heavens  indifferently, 
with  a  freedom  that  is  incompatible  with  the  notion  of  a 
vortex.  Bodies  projected  in  our  air  suffer  no  resistance 
but  from  the  air.  Withdraw  the  air,  as  is  done  in  Mr. 
Boyle's  vacuum,  and  the  resistance  ceases  ;  for  in  this  void 
a  bit  of  fine  down  and  a  piece  of  solid  gold  descend  with 
equal  velocity.  And  the  parity  of  reason  must  take  place 
in  the  celestial  spaces  above  the  earth's  atmosphere ;  in 
which  spaces,  where  there  is  no  air  to  resist  their  motions. 


NEWTON'S  GENERAL  SCHOLIUM.  333 

all  bodies  will  move  with  the  greatest  freedom  ;  and  the 
planets  and  comets  will  constantly  pursue  their  revolutions 
in  orbits  given  in  kind  and  position,  according  to  the  laws 
above  explained ;  but  though  these  bodies  may,  indeed, 
persevere  in  their  orbits  by  the  mere  laws  of  gravity,  yet 
they  could  by  no  means  have  at  first  derived  the  regular 
position  of  the  orbits  themselves  from  those  laws. 

"  The  six  primary  planets  are  revolved  about  the  sun  in 
circles  concentric  with  the  sun,  and  with  motions  directed 
toward  the  same  parts,  and  almost  in  the  same  plane.  Ten 
moons  are  revolved  about  the  earth,  Jupiter,  and  Saturn,  in 
circles  concentric  with  them,  with  the  same  direction  of 
motion,  and  nearly  in  the  planes  of  the  orbits  of  those 
planets  ;  but  it  is  not  to  be  conceived  that  mere  mechanical 
causes  could  give  birth  to  so  many  regular  motions,  since 
the  comets  range  over  all  parts  of  the  heavens  in  very  ec- 
centric orbits  ;  for  by  that  kind  of  motion  they  pass  easily 
through  the  orbits  of  the  planets,  and  with  great  rapidity  ; 
and  in  their  aphelions,  where  they  move  the  slowest,  and 
are  detained  the  longest,  they  recede  to  the  greatest  dis- 
tances from  each  other,  and  thence  suffer  the  least  disturb- 
ance from  their  mutual  attractions.  This  most  beautiful 
system  of  the  sun,  planets,  and  comets,  could  only  proceed 
from  the  counsel  and  dominion  of  an  intelligent  and  power- 
ful Being.  And  if  the  fixed  stars  are  the  centers  of  other 
like  systems,  these  being  formed  by  the  like  wise  counsel, 
must  be  all  subject  to  the  dominion  of  One  ;  especially 
since  the  light  of  the  fixed  stars  is  of  the  same  nature  with 
the  light  of  the  sun,  and  from  every  system  light  passes 
into  all  the  other  systems  ;  and  lest  the  systems  of  the  fixed 
stars  should,  by  their  gravity,  fall  on  each  other  mutually, 
he  hath  placed  those  systems  at  immense  distances  one  from 
another," 


CHAPTER  IX. 

Docs  evolution  account  for  the  phenomena  of  society  and  of  nature? — 
Necessity  for  a  conception  of  a  personal  actor— Mr.  Spencer's  proto- 
plasmic origin  of  all  organic  life — The  Mosaic  account  of  creation 
ti'eated  as  a  hypothesis  which  may  be  scientifically  contrasted  with 
evolution. 

A  LOi^Q  interyal  has  elapsed  since  the  conference  de- 
scribed in  the  last  chapter,  between  the  searcher  after  wis- 
dom and  his  scientific  friend.  At  their  next  interview  they 
take  up  the  subject  of  a  First  Cause  where  they  left  it  at 
the  conclusion  of  their  debate  on  the  solar  system. 

KosMicos.  Well,  Sophereus,  what  have  you  been  study- 
ing since  we  last  met  ? 

Sophereus.  Many  things.  I  have  been  studying  what 
is  commonly  called  Nature,  and  I  have  been  studying  so- 
ciety. With  regard  to  society,  I  have  been  endeavoring  to 
discover  to  what  the  phenomena  of  social  life  are  to  be  at- 
tributed as  their  producing  cause  or  causes  ;  whether  they 
can  be  said  to  owe  their  existence  to  the  direct  action  or 
influence  of  intelligent  wills,  or  are  to  be  considered  as 
effects  produced  in  the  course  of  an  ungoverned  develop- 
ment, wrought  by  incidental  forces  in  varying  conditions 
of  human  existence.  The  latter,  I  find,  is  one  of  the  the- 
ories now  prevailing. 

KosMicos.  And  what  is  your  conclusion  ? 

Sophereus.  My  general  conclusion  in  regard  to  the 
phenomena  of  human  society  is  the  same  as  that  which  I 
formed  from  a  study  of  the  phenomena  of  the  solar  system. 
I  find  a  great  many  things  which  I  can  not  explain  without 


SOCIAL  PHENOMENA,  335 

the  hypothesis  of  a  direct  creating  power  exerted  by  an  in- 
telligent being.  I  know  that  you  object  to  the  idea  of  cre- 
ation, but  I  explained  to  you  in  our  last  discussion  that  I 
understood  it  to  mean  the  causing  something  to  exist  which 
did  not  exist  before,  and  the  doing  it  by  an  intentional  and 
direct  act  of  production. 

KosMicos.  No  matter  about  your  definition.  What  are 
the  facts  that  you  propose  to  discuss  ? 

SoPHEEEUS.  In  the  social  phenomena  I  find  many  acts 
of  creation.  I  do  not  find  that  buildings  spring  out  of  the 
ground  without  human  intervention,  or  that  machinery  is 
formed  by  the  spontaneous  arrangement  of  matter  in  cer- 
tain forms  and  relations,  or  by  the  tendencies  that  are  im- 
planted in  matter  as  its  inherent  properties.  I  find  an 
enormous  multitude  of  concrete  objects,  formed  out  of  dead 
matter,  by  human  intervention,  availing  itself  of  those  prop- 
erties of  matter,  which  without  such  active  intervention 
would  have  remained  quiescent,  and  would  not  have  re- 
sulted in  the  production  of  these  objects.  It  is  a  common 
form  of  expression  to  speak  of  the  '^growth"  of  cities,  but 
no  one  understands  by  this  form  of  speech  that  a  city  has 
become  what  it  is  without  the  action  of  numerous  individ- 
uals projecting  and  building  their  separate  structures,  or 
without  the  combined  action  of  the  whole  body  of  the  in- 
habitants in  determining  and  executing  a  general  plan  to 
which  individuals  are  to  conform,  more  or  less  exactly,  their 
particular  erections.  Again,  I  find  that  there  are  rules  of 
social  life,  which  take  the  form  of  what  are  called  "laws," 
and  these  are  imposed  by  the  will  of  some  governing  au- 
thority ;  they  are  always  the  product  of  some  one  human 
will,  or  of  the  collective  will  of  a  greater  number  of  per- 
sons. I  have  looked  into  history  and  have  found  many  in- 
stances of  military  conquest,  invasions  of  the  territory  in- 
habited by  one  race  of  men  by  another  race,  domination  of 
different  dynasties,  overthrow  of  one  governing  power,  and 


336  CEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

substitution  of  another.  Although  the  changes  thus  pro- 
duced are  often  very  complex,  sometimes  rapid  and  some- 
times slow  in  reaching  the  consequences,  I  do  not  find  that 
they  have  ever  taken  place  without  the  direct  action  of 
some  one  human  will,  or  of  the  aggregate  force  of  many 
human  wills.  The  conquests  of  Alexander  and  Napoleon 
are  instances  of  what  a  single  human  will  can  do  in  chang- 
ing the  condition  of  nations ;  and  I  have  not  been  able  to 
read  history  by  the  interpretation  that  makes  such  men 
mere  instruments  in  the  hands  of  their  age,  which  would, 
without  their  special  existences  and  characters,  have  brought 
about  the  same  or  something  like  the  same  results.  The 
invasions  of  the  Roman  Empire  by  the  Northern  barbarians 
are  instances  of  the  pressure  of  one  population  upon  another, 
not  attributable,  perhaps,  to  the  will  and  leadership  of  any 
one  individual,  but  produced  by  the  united  force  of  a  great 
horde  of  individuals  determined  to  enjoy  the  plunder  which 
a  superior  civilization  spread  before  them.  Then,  with  re- 
gard to  the  phenomena  of  what  are  called  constitutions  of 
government,  or  the  political  systems  of  exercising  public 
authority,  I  find  numerous  cases  in  which  the  force  of  an 
individual  will  and  intelligence  has  been  not  only  a  great 
factor,  but  by  far  the  largest  factor  in  the  production  of 
particular  institutions.  The  genius  of  Caesar,  and  his  ex- 
traordinary constructive  faculties,  molded  the  institutions 
of  Rome  in  the  most  direct  manner,  and  created  an  imperial 
system  that  lasted  for  a  thousand  years,  and  that  even  out 
of  its  ruins  affected  all  subsequent  European  civilization. 
In  such  cases,  more  than  once  repeated  in  modern  times, 
the  particular  circumstances  of  the  age  and  the  co-operation 
of  many  other  individuals  have  helped  on  the  result,  but  the 
conception,  the  plan,  the  purpose,  and  the  execution,  have 
had  their  origin  in  some  one  mind.  But  for  the  individual 
character,  the  ambition,  the  force,  and  the  mental  resources 
of  the  first  Napoleon,  can  one  believe  that  the  first  French 


SOCIAL  PHENOMENA.  337 

Empire  of  modern  times  would  have  grown  out  of  the  con- 
dition of  France  ?  Suppose  that  Oliver  Cromwell  had 
never  lived.  The  protectorate,  the  system  of  govern- 
ment which  he  gave  to  England,  was  the  most  absolute 
product  of  the  will  and  intellect  of  one  man  that  the  world 
in  that  kind  of  product  had  ever  seen ;  for,  although  the 
people  of  England  were  ready  for  and  needed  that  system, 
and  although  the  antecedent  and  the  surrounding  circum- 
stances furnished  to  Cromwell  many  materials  for  a  political 
structure  that  was  not  the  old  monarchy,  and  yet  had  while 
it  lasted  all  the  vigor,  and  more  than  the  vigor,  of  the  old 
monarchy,  still,  without  his  personal  characteristics,  his 
ambition  to  found  a  dynasty  on  the  wants  of  his  country, 
and  his  personal  capacity  to  devise  and  execute  such  a  sys- 
tem, one  can  not  believe  that  England  would  have  had 
what  he  gave  her.  What  he  could  not  give  her  was  a  son 
capable  of  wielding  the  scepter  which  he  had  fashioned. 
Here  is  this  America  of  yours — a  country  in  which,  to  a 
certain  extent,  the  political  institutions  have  been  influ- 
enced by  the  circumstances  that  followed  the  separation  of 
your  colonies  from  the  English  crown.  Undoubtedly,  your 
ancestors  of  the  Revolutionary  epoch  could  not  construct  a 
monarchy  for  the  group  of  thirteen  newly  existing  States, 
each  with  its  right  and  enjoyment  of  an  actual  autonomy. 
The  habits  and  genius  of  the  i^eople  forbade  the  experiment 
of  monarchical  or  aristocratic  institutions  ;  no  materials  for 
either  existed.  But  within  the  range  of  republican  insti- 
tutions there  was  a  choice  open,  and  the  people  exercised 
that  choice.  They  made  one  system  of  confederated  States, 
and  found  it  would  not  answer.  They  then  deliberately 
assembled  their  wisest  and  greatest  men.  They  gave  to 
them  a  commission  that  was  restricted  by  nothing  but  the 
practical  necessity  of  framing  a  government  that  would 
unite  the  requirements  of  power  with  the  requirements  of 
liberty.     The  result  was  the  Constitution  of  the  United 


338  CKEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

States — a  system  of  government  that  was,  within  the  limi- 
tations of  certain  practical  necessities,  both  in  its  funda- 
mental principles  and  in  many  of  its  details,  the  deliberate 
choice  and  product  of  certain  leading  minds,  aided  by  the 
public  consent,  to  a  degree  that  is  almost  unparalleled  in 
the  formation  of  political  institutions.  After  it  had  gone 
into  operation,  it  was  believed  that  the  requirements  of  lib- 
erty had  not  been  sufiBciently  regarded,  and  it  was  directly 
and  purposely  modified  by  the  intervention  of  the  collective 
will  of  the  whole  people.  And  when  I  turn  to  the  history 
of  philosophies,  of  religions,  of  the  fine  arts,  or  of  the  me- 
chanical arts,  I  find  everywhere  traces  of  the  force  of  indi- 
vidual genius,  of  the  direct  intervention  of  individual  wills, 
and  of  the  power  of  men  to  cause  new  systems  of  thought 
and  action  to  come  into  existence,  and  to  create  new  objects 
of  admiration  or  utility.  In  regard  to  languages,  I  have 
read  a  good  deal  about  the  controversy  concerning  their 
origin,  but  I  have  observed  one  thing  to  be  very  apparent : 
whether  the  gift  of  articulate  speech  was  bestowed  on  man, 
when  he  had  become  a  distinct  being,  in  a  manner  and  for 
a  purpose  which  would  distinguish  him  from  all  the  other 
animals,  or  whether  it  became  a  developed  faculty  akin  to 
that  by  which  other  animals  utter  vocal  sounds  intelligible 
to  those  of  their  species,  it  is  certain  that  in  man  there  is 
a  power  of  varying  his  vocal  utterances  at  pleasure,  which 
is  possessed  by  no  other  creature  on  this  earth.  The  ex- 
pansion of  languages,  therefore,  the  coinage  of  new  words, 
the  addition  of  new  inflections,  the  introduction  of  new 
shades  of  meaning,  the  method  of  utterance  which  is  called 
pronunciation,  and  the  different  dialects  of  the  same  tongue, 
are  all  matters  which  have  been  under  the  control  of  indi- 
viduals dwelling  together,  and  have  all  resulted  from  the 
arbitrary  determination  of  more  or  less  numerous  persons, 
followed  by  the  great  mass  of  their  nation,  their  race,  or 
their  tribe.    Even  when  a  new  and  third  language  has  been 


PERSONIFICATION   OF  POWER.  339 

formed  by  the  contact  of  two  peoples  speaking  separate 
tongues,  we  may  trace  the  same  arbitrary  adoption  of  parts 
of  each  separate  tongue,  in  the  first  beginning  of  the  fusion, 
and  the  new  language  consequently  exhibits  a  greater  or  a 
less  predominance  of  the  characteristics  of  one  of  its  parent 
tongues,  according  as  the  one  population  has  compelled  the 
other  to  adopt  the  greater  part  of  its  peculiar  modes  of 
speech. 

KosMicos.  You  have  gone  over  a  good  deal  of  ground, 
but  now  what  do  you  infer  from  all  this,  supposing  that 
you  have  taken  a  right  view  of  the  facts  ? 

SoPHEREUS.  I  infer  that,  as  in  the  social  phenomena 
there  are  products  and  effects  which  have  owed  their  ex- 
istence to  human  will  and  direct  human  action,  so,  in 
other  departments,  for  example,  in  the  domain  which  is 
called  Nature,  and  which  is  out  of  the  sphere  of  human 
agency  and  human  force,  it  is  reasonable  to  conclude  that 
there  are  products  and  effects  which  must  have  owed  their 
existence  to  a  will  and  a  power  capable  of  conceiving  and 
producing  them.  And  this  is  what  leads  me,  as  I  was  led 
in  the  examination  of  the  solar  system,  to  the  idea  of  a 
Supreme  Being,  capable  of  producing  those  objects  in  na- 
ture which  are  so  varied,  so  complex,  so  marvelously  con- 
structed, so  nicely  adapted  to  the  conditions  of  each  sep- 
arate organism,  that  if  we  attribute  their  existence  to  any 
intelligent  power,  it  must  be  to  a  power  of  infinite  capaci- 
ties, since  nothing  short  of  such  capacities  could  have  con- 
ceived and  executed  them. 

KosMicos.  You  have  now  come  to  the  very  point  at 
wliich  I  have  been  expecting  to  see  you  arrive,  and  at 
which  I  will  put  to  you  this  question :  Why  do  you  per- 
sonify the  power  to  which  you  trace  these  products  in  the 
natural  world  ?  Substitute  for  the  term  God,  or  the  Cre- 
ator, the  power  of  Nature.     You  then  have  a  force  that  is 

not  only  immense,  but  is  in  truth  without  any  limit — a 
16 


340  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

force  that  embraces  everything,  gives  life  to  everything,  is 
at  once  cause  and  effect,  is  incessantly  active  and  inex- 
haustible. It  commands  all  methods,  accomplishes  all  ob- 
jects, and  uses  time,  space,  and  matter  as  its  means.  Why 
do  you  personify  this  all-pervading  and  sufficient  power  of 
Nature  ?  Why  make  it  a  being,  a  deity,  when  all  you 
know  is  that  it  is  a  power  ?  "  Where  wast  thou  when  I 
laid  the  foundations  of  the  world  ?  "  is  a  question  that  God 
is  supposed  to  have  asked  of  Job  ;  and  it  simply  shows  that 
Job  had  been  traditionally  taught  to  believe  that  there  is 
such  a  being  as  God,  and  that  that  being  laid  the  founda- 
tions of  the  world.  Substitute  Nature  in  the  question,  let 
Nature  ask  the  question,  and  it  is  just  as  pertinent,  and  in- 
volves the  same  problem  of  human  existence.  Where  was 
man  when  Nature  began  to  exhibit  that  power  which  has 
evolved  all  things  that  we  see  out  of  the  primeval  nothing- 
ness ? 

SoPHEREUS.  Well,  here  I  must  say  that  you  have  left 
out  certain  ideas  that  are  essential  to  all  true  reasoning  on 
this  subject.  Power  without  a  guide,  power  without  con- 
trol, power  without  a  determining  will,  power  that  acts 
without  a  volition  which  determines  the  how  and  the  when, 
is  a  thing  that  I  can  not  conceive.  I  thought  that  in  our 
former  conversation,  when  we  were  considering  the  solar 
system,  you  conceded  that  power,  as  something  abstracted 
from  substance  or  its  properties,  was  a  logically  necessary 
conception. 

KosMicos.  I  did.  But  I  did  not  concede  that  power 
must  be  converted  into  a  person.  You  must  not  misun- 
derstand me.  It  certainly  is  my  idea  that  power  is  a  thing 
to  be  contemplated  by  itself ;  and  we  are  surrounded  every- 
where by  its  manifestations.  But  it  is  not  my  idea  that  it 
is  held  and  exercised  by  the  being  called  God,  or  by  any 
being.  We  only  know  of  it  by  its  effects ;  and  these  show 
that  Nature  is,  after  all,  both  cause  and  effect,  manner  and 


POWER  AND  WILL  INSEPARABLE.  341 

execution,  design  and  product.  You  can  go  no  farther. 
You  can  not  go  behind  Nature  and  find  a  being  who  sat 
in  the  heavens  and  laid  the  foundations  of  the  world,  un- 
less you  mean  to  accept  a  story  which  wise  men  have  at 
last  abandoned  along  with  many  kindred  beliefs  which 
came  from  the  ages  of  the  greatest  ignorance. 

SoPHEREUS.  Pardon  me  :  the  question  that  was  put  to 
Job  has  more  than  one  aspect.  But  I  have  considered  the 
narrative  that  is  found  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  only 
as  a  hypothesis  to  be  weighed  with  other  hypotheses  of  the 
origin  of  the  world  and  its  inhabitants.  I  have  studied  the 
phenomena  to  which  you  give  the  name  of  Nature,  and  I 
will  tell  you  what  seems  to  me  to  be  a  postulate  necessary 
to  be  carried  into  that  study.  I  have  observed  that  in  the 
works  of  man  two  things  are  apparent :  One  is,  that  power 
is  exercised  ;  the  other  is,  that  the  exercise  of  the  power  is 
always  accompanied  by  a  determining  will,  which  decides 
that  the  power  shall  be  exerted,  or  that  it  shall  be  deferred, 
or  that  it  shall  be  applied  variously  as  respects  the  mode 
and  the  time.  In  human  hands,  power  is  not  illimitable, 
but  within  certain  limitations  it  may  be  exercised,  and  it  is 
always  under  the  guidance  of  a  will.  A  man  determines  to 
build  a  house  ;  he  decides  on  its  dimensions,  and  when  he 
will  begin  to  erect  it.  A  general  determines  to  attack  the 
enemy  on  a  certain  day,  and  he  marshals  his  forces  accord- 
ingly. A  people  determine  to  change  their  government, 
and  they  decide  what  their  new  government  shall  be.  An 
artist  determines  to  paint  a  certain  picture,  and  he  paints 
it.  Whenever  we  see  human  power  exercised,  so  that  we 
can  connect  product  and  power,  the  power  itself  is  put  in 
motion  by  an  intelligent  will.  I  say,  therefore,  that  the 
idea  of  power  without  a  controlling  will,  without  a  deter- 
mining design,  is  inconceivable :  for  I  am  obliged  to  draw  my 
conclusions  from  what  I  observe,  and  certainly  the  phenom- 
ena of  society  do  not  present  any  instances  of  a  product  re- 


343  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

suiting  from  an  exercise  of  power  without  a  determination 
to  exercise  it.  Power  diffused,  power  without  guidance, 
power  moying  by  its  own  volition  and  without  the  volition 
of  any  intelligent  being,  is  not  exhibited  in  the  works  of 
man. 

KosMicos.  But  we  are  now  dealing  with  the  works  of 
Nature  ;  and  the  question  is,  whether  the  power  that  is 
manifest  in  Nature  is,  to  adopt  your  language,  under  the 
control  or  guidance  of  a  being  who  is  something  other  than 
the  power  itself.  You  must  remember  that  this  is  a  do- 
main in  which  you  can  see  nothing  but  products  and  effects. 
You  must  also  remember  that  if  the  immensity  and  variety 
of  those  products  and  effects  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
power  transcends  all  human  faculty,  is  superhuman,  and,  so 
far  as  we  can  tell,  boundless,  all  that  we  can  know  is  that  the 
power  itself  is  illimitable.  The  quality  of  an  infinite  and 
illimitable  capacity  may  be  imputed  to  the  power  of  Nature, 
because  a  power  without  limit  seems  necessary  to  the  pro- 
duction of  such  effects  as  we  see.  But  here  we  must  stop. 
We  have  no  warrant  for  believing  that  the  power  which  we 
trace  in  the  phenomena  of  Nature  is  held  and  controlled  by 
a  person,  as  man  holds  and  controls  the  power  which  he  ex- 
ercises with  his  hands.  What  we  see  in  Nature  is  the  exer- 
cise of  an  immense  and  apparently  boundless  power.  But 
the  imputation  of  that  power  to  a  being  distinct  from  the 
power  itself,  is  a  mere  exercise  of  the  human  imagination, 
without  any  proof  whatever.  See  how  this  imagination  has 
worked  at  different  periods.  Monotheism  and  polytheism 
are  alike  in  their  origin.  The  one  has  imputed  to  different 
beings  all  the  phenomena  in  the  different  departments  of 
Nature,  one  being  having  the  charge  and  superintendence 
of  one  department  and  another  being  having  another  de- 
partment. Good  and  evil  have  thus  been  parceled  out  to 
different  deities  or  demons.  On  the  other  hand,  monothe- 
ism attributes  all  to  some  one  being,  and  his  existence  is  no 


POWER  IMPLIES   AN  ACTOR.  343 

more  rational  than  the  existence  of  the  whole  catalogue  of 
the  mythologies  of  all  antiquity,  or  the  stupid  beliefs  of  the 
present  barbarous  tribes.  But  Nature  is  a  great  fact,  or 
rather  a  vast  store-house  of  facts,  which  we  can  study  ;  and 
what  we  learn  from  it  is  that  there  is  a  power  which  Nature 
is  constantly  exerting,  which  is  without  any  assignable  limit, 
which  is  itself  both  cause  and  effect,  and  beyond  this  we 
can  not  go. 

SoPHEREUS.  Let  us  see  if  you  are  correct.  In  the  first 
place,  do  you  not  observe  that  the  tendency  of  mankind  to 
personify  the  powers  of  Nature  is  one  of  the  strongest  proofs 
of  the  logical  necessity  for  an  interpretation  which  seeks 
for  an  intelligent  being  of  some  kind  as  the  actor  in  the 
production  of  the  phenomena  ?  It  is  the  fashion,  I  find, 
among  a  certain  class  of  philosophers,  to  impute  this  pro- 
pensity to  the  proneness  of  the  human  mind  toward  super- 
stitious beliefs  ;  to  the  mere  effect  of  poetical  or  imaginary 
temperament  in  certain  races  of  men,  or  to  fear  in  other 
races  ;  or  to  a  vague  longing  for  some  superior  being  who 
can  sympathize  with  human  sorrows  or  assist  human  efforts. 
Something  of  all  theSe  influences  has,  no  doubt,  in  different 
degrees  and  in  various  ways,  worked  itself  into  the  religious 
beliefs  of  mankind.  But  neither  any  one  of  them,  nor  the 
whole  of  them,  will  satisfactorily  account  for  either  poly- 
theism or  monotheism.  "We  must  go  deeper.  There  has 
been  an  unconscious  reasoning  at  work,  more  or  less  un- 
conscious, which  has  led  to  the  conclusion  that  power,  the 
manifestation  of  power,  necessarily  implies  that  the  power 
is  held  and  wielded  by  some  intelligent  being.  The  beliefs 
of  mankind,  whether  embracing  one  such  being  or  many, 
have  not  been  the  mere  results  of  superstition,  or  fear,  or 
longing  for  divine  sympathy,  or  for  superhuman  companion- 
ship or  protection.  Those  beliefs  owe  as  much  to  the  reason- 
ing powers  of  mankind  as  they  do  to  the  influence  of  im- 
agination.    In  many  ages  there  have  been  powerful  intel- 


344  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

lects,  which  have  been  free  from  the  influence  of  superstition 
or  fancy,  and  which  have  recognized  the  logical  necessity 
for  a  conception  of  power  as  a  force  that  must  be  under  the 
guidance  and  control  of  intellect.  While  the  popular  belief 
has  not  attained  this  conviction  by  the  same  conscious  and 
logically  conducted  process  of  reasoning,  it  has  been  un- 
consciously led  through  the  same  process,  by  what  is  open 
to  the  observation  of  human  faculties,  even  in  the  less  civ- 
ilized portions  of  the  human  race.  The  savage  who  is  suffi- 
ciently raised  above  the  brute  creation  to  exercise  his  own 
will  and  intelligence  in  the  pursuit  of  his  game,  or  in  build- 
ing his  wigwam,  or  in  fighting  his  enemy,  knows  that  he 
exercises  a  power  that  is  under  his  own  control ;  and,  as 
soon  as  he  begins  to  observe  the  phenomena  of  Nature,  he 
conceives  of  some  being  who  holds  a  like  power  over  the 
material  universe,  and  whom  he  begins  to  personify,  to 
propitiate,  and  to  worship.  This  is  the  result  of  reasoning  : 
feeble  in  some  cases,  but  in  all  cases  the  intellectual  process 
is  the  same.  Now  let  us  see  whether  this  process  is  a  sound 
one.  Are  you  sure  that  you  are  correct  in  saying  that  the 
power  of  Nature  is  without  limit  ?  Is'  there  a  single  force 
in  Nature,  a  single  property  of  matter,  or  any  sequence  of 
natural  events,  that  is  not  circumscribed  ?  Do  not  the 
very  regularity  and  uniformity  of  the  phenomena  of  Nature 
imply  that  some  authority  has  said,  from  the  beginning. 
Thus  far  shalt  thou  go  and  no  farther  ?  You  surely  do  not 
imagine  that  the  law  of  universal  gravitation  made  itself, 
or  that  it  settled  itself  into  an  exact  and  invariable  method 
of  action  by  the  mere  force  of  habit,  beginning  without  pre- 
scribed and  superimposed  limits,  and  finally  resulting  in  a 
fixed  rule  which  never  changes.  You  do  not  imagine  that 
the  mysterious,  impalpable  motion  to  which  is  now  given  the 
name  of  electricity,  created  for  itself,  as  a  matter  of  habit, 
the  perpetual  tendency  to  seek  an  equilibration  of  the  quan- 
tity accumulated  in  one  body  with  the  quantity  that  is  con- 


MAX  AND  NATURE.  345 

tained  in  another,  by  transmission  through  intermediate 
bodies  ;  or  that  it  established  for  itself  the  conditions  which 
make  one  substance  a  better  conducting  medium  than  an- 
other. You  do  not  suppose,  I  take  it,  that  certain  particles  of 
matter  adopted  for  themselves  a  capacity  to  arrange  them- 
selves in  crystals  of  certain  fixed  combinations  and  shapes, 
and  that  other  particles  of  matter  did  not  choose  to  take  on 
this  habit.  All  these  forces,  powers,  and  tendencies  are  of 
very  great  extent,  much  beyond  any  that  man  can  exercise  ; 
but  they  all  have  their  limitations,  their  prescribed  and  in- 
variable methods  of  action  ;  they  all  act  as  if  they  have  been 
commanded  to  act  in  a  certain  way  and  to  a  certain  extent, 
and  not  as  if  they  have  chosen  for  themselves  both  method 
and  scope.  Now,  is  it  not  a  rational  deduction  that  what  is 
really  illimitable  is  not  the  power  of  Nature,  but  the  power 
which  made  Nature  what  it  is  ?  Is  it  not  a  necessary  con- 
clusion that,  inasmuch  as  all  Nature  acts  within  certain 
limits,  stupendous  and  minute  and  varied  as  ^he  products 
or  effects  may  be,  there  must  have  been  behind  Nature  a 
power  that  could  and  did  prescribe  the  methods,  the  limi- 
tations, the  lines  within  which  Nature  was  to  move  and  act  ? 
You  can  not  put  into  the  mouth  of  Nature  the  question. 
Where  wast  thou  (Man)  when  1  laid  the  foundations  of  the 
world  ?  without  suggesting  the  retort.  Where  wast  thou 
(Nature)  when  the  foundations  of  the  world  were  laid  ? 
And  this  question  Nature  can  no  more  answer,  for  itself, 
than  man  can  answer  for  himself  when  the  question  is  put 
to  him.  Each  must  answer,  I  was  nowhere — I  did  not  exist. 
Each  must  answer.  There  was  a  power  which  called  me  into 
being,  which  prescribed  the  conditions  of  my  existence, 
which  gave  me  the  capacities  that  I  possess,  which  ordained 
the  limitations  within  which  I  was  to  act. 

KosMicos.  And  all  this  you  derive  from  the  fact  that  a 
being  whom  we  call  Man  has  some  power  over  matter ;  that 
he  has  an  intelligent  faculty  by  which  he  can  do  certain 


346  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION"? 

things  with  matter,  and  that  he  actually  does  produce  cer- 
tain concrete  forms  of  new  things  that  he  did  not  find  made 
to  his  hand.  Is  this  the  basis  of  your  reasoning  about  the 
origin  of  Nature  ? 

SoPHEKEUS.  It  is,  and  I  will  tell  you  why.  Man  is  the 
one  being  on  this  earth  in  whom  we  find  an  intelligent  will 
and  constructive  faculty  united,  to  a  degree  which  shows 
a  power  of  variation  and  execution  superior  to  that  of  all 
other  beings  of  whose  actions  we  have  the  direct  evidence 
of  our  senses.  We  might  select  one  or  more  of  the  inferior 
animals,  and  find  in  them  a  strong  constructive  faculty ; 
but  we  do  not  find  it  accompanied  by  a  power  of  variation 
and  adaptation  that  is  equal  to  that  of  man  in  degree,  or 
that  is  probably  the  same  in  kind.  I  will  not  insist  on  the 
distinction  between  reason  and  instinct,  but  I  presume  you 
will  admit  that,  when  we  compare  the  constructive  faculty 
of  man  and  that  of  the  most  ingenious  and  wonderfully 
endowed  animal  or  insect,  the  latter  acts  always  under  an 
implanted  impulse,  which  we  have  no  good  ground  for  re- 
garding as  of  the  same  nature  as  man's  reasoning  power, 
however  striking  may  be  the  products.  When,  therefore, 
we  select  the  human  power  of  construction  or  creation  as 
the  basis  of  reasoning  upon  the  works  of  Nature,  we  resort 
to  a  being  in  whom  that  power  is  the  highest  of  which  we 
have  direct  evidence.  In  the  works  of  man  we  have  direct 
and  palpable  proof  that  the  phenomena — the  products  of 
human  skill  and  human  force — are  brought  about  by  the 
faculties  of  an  intelligent  and  reasoning  being.  If  we  dig 
into  the  earth  and  find  there  a  statue,  an  implement,  or  a 
weapon,  we  do  not  hesitate  to  conclude  that  the  spot  was 
once  inhabited  by  men,  just  as  surely  as  we  should  conclude 
the  same  thing  if  we  found  there  human  bones.  The  world, 
above-ground  and  below-ground,  is  full  of  concrete  objects 
that  we  know  must  have  been  fashioned  by  human  skill, 
guided  by  human  intelligence.     This  intelligence,  this  in- 


MAN  AND  NATURE.  347 

tellect,  is  not  matter ;  it  is  a  being ;  it  is  a  person.  It  is 
not  a  force,  acting  without  consciousness;  it  is  a  being 
wielding  a  force  which  is  under  the  control  of  volition. 
The  force  and  the  volition  are  both  limited,  but  within  the 
limitations  they  constitute  the  power  of  man.  Pass,  then, 
to  the  works  of  Nature,  or  to  what  you  call  the  power  of 
Nature.  As,  in  the  case  of  man,  you  can  not  conclude  that 
he  created  for  himself  his  own  faculties,  that  he  prescribed 
for  himself  the  limitations  of  his  power  over  matter,  or  that 
he  formed  those  limitations  as  mere  matters  of  habit,  or 
that  it  was  from  habit  alone  that  he  derived  his  great  con- 
structive powers,  so,  in  studying  the  works  of  Nature,  you 
must  conclude  that  some  intelligent  being  made  the  laws 
of  matter  and  motion,  prescribed  the  unvarying  order  and 
method  of  action,  laid  down  the  limitations,  originated 
the  properties,  and,  in  so  doing,  acted  by  volition,  choice, 
and  design.  The  distinction,  as  I  conceive,  between  man 
and  Nature  is,  that  there  has  been  bestowed  on  man,  in 
a  very  inferior  degree,  a  part  of  the  original  power  of 
creation.  On  Nature  there  has  been  bestowed  none  of 
this  power.  As  we  find  that  the  existence  of  man  as  an 
intelligent  being,  endowed  with  certain  high  faculties, 
among  which  is  a  certain  degree  of  the  power  of  creat- 
ing new  objects,  can  not  be  accounted  for  without  the 
hypothesis  of  a  creator,  still  less  can  we  account  for 
the  existence  and  phenomena  of  Nature,  which  has  in 
itself  no  degree  of  the  creating  power,  without  the  same 
hypothesis. 

KosMicos.  Stop  where  you  are.  Why  do  you  separate 
man  from  Nature  ?  Have  you  yet  to  learn  that  man  is  a 
part  of  Nature  ?  I  suspect  you  have,  after  all,  been  reading 
the  book  of  Genesis  for  something  more  than  a  hypothe- 
sis, and  that  you  have  adopted  the  notion  that  God  made 
Adam  a  living  soul.  Put  away  all  the  nursery-stories,  and 
come  down  to  the  *'  hard-pan  "  of  actual  facts,  which  show 


348  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

by  an  overwhelming  array  of  evidence  that  man  had  a  very 
different  origin. 

SoPHEREUS.  You  know,  my  friend,  that  I  never  learned 
any  nursery-stories,  and  therefore  I  have  none  to  unlearn. 
It  may  be  my  misfortune,  but  I  find  myself  here  in  the 
world  in  mature  years,  studying  the  phenomena  of  life, 
without  having  had  any  early  teaching,  but  with  such 
reasoning  as  1  can  apply  to  what  I  observe,  and  to  what 
science,  history,  and  philosophy  can  furnish  to  me.  I  be- 
long to  no  church,  to  no  sect,  to  no  party,  and  I  have  not 
even  a  country.  I  am  a  citizen  of  the  world,  on  my  travels 
through  it,  learning  what  I  can.  Now,  what  are  your  facts  ? 
Let  us  get  down,  as  you  say,  upon  the  "hard-pan,"  and 
make  it  as  hard  as  you  please. 

KosMicos.  First  answer  my  question  :  Why  do  you 
separate  man  from  Nature  ? 

SoPHEREUS.  I  know  very  well  that  in  a  certain  sense 
man  is  a  part  of  Nature.  But  it  is  necessary  to  contemplate 
man  apart  from  all  the  rest  of  Nature,  because  we  find  that 
he  is  endowed  with  intellect,  and  we  have  very  good  and 
direct  evidence  that  his  intellect  is  an  actor ;  and  we  know 
that  he  is  endowed  with  consciousness,  and  we  have  very 
good  and  direct  evidence  that,  by  introspection,  he  becomes 
aware  of  his  own  consciousness,  and  what  it  is. 

KosMicos.  Very  well,  assume  all  that  if  you  choose. 
Now  let  .me  show  you  an  origin  of  man,  with  his  intellect 
and  consciousness,  which  will  entirely  overthrow  the  idea 
that  he  was  a  special  creation  in  the  sense  to  which  you 
seem  to  be  drifting,  namely,  that  of  miraculous  interposi- 
tion by  a  being  called  God.  You  must  be  aware,  as  you 
have  read  so  much,  that  modern  science  has  made  great 
discoveries,  and  that  there  are  certain  conclusions  on  this 
subject  which  are  drawn  from  very  numerous  and  important 
data.  Those  data  involve  the  origin  of  all  the  different 
animals,  man  included.     They  are  all  to  be  accounted  for 


SPENCER'S  ORIGIN  OF  LIFE.  349 

in  the  same  way  and  by  the  same  reasoning.  Now,  if  we 
go  hack  to  a  period  when  none  of  them  existed,  we  find  a 
method  of  accounting  for  them  that  is  infinitely  superior 
as  a  hypothesis  to  any  idea  of  their  special  creation  as  an 
act  or  as  a  series  of  acts  of  divine  and  direct  interposition. 
I  will  take  this  method  as  it  is  given  by  Herbert  Spencer, 
because,  as  he  has  reasoned  it,  it  accounts  for  both  intellect 
and  consciousness ;  and  Mr.  Spencer  is  allowed  to  be  one 
of  the  leading  minds  of  this  age.  Mark  the  starting-point 
of  his  whole  philosophy  on  this  subject  of  organic  life. 
Darwin,  as  you  know,  supposes  some  one  very  low  form  of 
organic  life,  an  aquatic  grub,  and  out  of  it  he  evolves  all 
the  other  animal  organisms,  by  the  process  of  natural  and 
sexual  selection,  through  successive  generations,  ending  in 
man.  This  hypothesis  leaves  the  original  organism  to  be 
accounted  for,  and,  although  Darwin  does  not  expressly  as- 
sert that  it  was  the  Creator  who  fashioned  the  first  organism, 
he  leaves  it  to  be  implied.  Spencer,  on  the  other  hand, 
explicitly  denies  the  absolute  commencement  of  organic  life 
on  the  globe.  Observe  that  the  terms  of  his  theory  of  evo- 
lution are  much  more  complete  than  Darwin's,  for  he  says 
that  ^*  the  affirmation  of  universal  evolution  is  in  itself  a 
negation  of  an  absolute  commencement  of  anything.  Con- 
strued in  terms  of  evolution,  every  kind  of  being  is  con- 
ceived as  a  product  of  modifications  wrought  by  insensible 
gradations  on  a  pre-existing  being  ;  and  this  holds  as  fully 
of  the  supposed  commencement  of  organic  life,  or  a  first 
organism,  as  of  all  subsequent  developments  of  organic 
life."* 

You  will  see,  therefore,  that  the  idea  of  a  Creator,  fash- 
ioning a  type  of  animal  organism,  or  making  a  commence- 
ment of  organic  life,  is  excluded  by  this  great  philosopher, 
although  he  does  concur  in  the  main  in  Darwin's  general  ex- 

*"Biology,"i,  p.  482. 


350  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

planation  of  the  mode  in  which  one  organism  is  evolved  out 
of  a  pre-existing  organism.  He  goes  much  farther,  because 
his  system  of  universal  evolution  embraces  the  elements  out 
of  which  any  organic  life  whatever  has  been  developed,  and 
negatives  the  idea  of  any  absolute  commencement  of  any- 
thing whatever.  He  begins  with  the  original  molecules  of 
organizable  matter.  By  modifications  induced  upon  modi- 
fications these  become  formed,  by  their  inherent  tendencies, 
into  higher  types  of  organic  molecules,  as  we  see  in  the 
artificial  evolution  effected  by  chemists  in  their  laborato- 
ries ;  who,  although  they  are  unable  to  form  the  complex 
combinations  directly  from  their  elements,  can  form  them 
indirectly  through  successive  modifications  of  simpler  com- 
binations, by  the  use  of  equivalents.  In  Nature,  the  more 
complex  combinations  are  formed  by  modifications  directly 
from  the  elements,  and  each  modification  is  a  change  of 
the  molecule  into  equilibrium  with  its  environment,  sub- 
jecting it,  that  is  to  say,  to  new  conditions.  Then,  larger 
aggregates,  compound  molecules,  are  successively  generated; 
more  complex  or  heterogeneous  aggregates  arise  out  of  one 
another,  and  there  results  a  geometrically  increasing  multi- 
tude of  these  larger  and  more  complex  aggregates.  So  that 
by  the  action  of  the  successive  higher  forms  on  one  another, 
joined  with  the  action  of  the  environing  conditions,  the 
highest  forms  of  organic  molecules  are  reached.  Thus  in 
the  early  world,  as  in  the  modern  laboratory,  inferior  types 
of  organic  substances,  by  their  mutual  actions  under  fit 
conditions,  evolved  the  superior  types  of  organic  substances, 
and  at  length  ended  in  organizable  protoplasm.  Now,  let 
me  read  to  you  Mr.  Spencer's  description  of  the  mode  in 
which  the  substance  called  "protein"  becomes  developed 
into  organic  life.  "And  it  can  hardly  be  doubted,"  he 
says,  "  that  the  shaping  of  organizable  protoplasm,  which 
is  a  substance  modifiable  in  multitudinous  ways  with  ex- 
treme facility,  went  on  after  the  same  manner.     As  I  learn 


THE   ORIGINAL  CELL.  85t 

from  one  of  our  first  chemists.  Prof.  Frankland,  protein 
is  capable  of  existing  under  probably  at  least  a  thousand 
isomeric  forms ;  and,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  it  is  capable 
of  forming,  with  itself  and  other  elements,  substances  yet 
more  intricate  in  composition,  that  are  practically  intricate 
in  their  varieties  of  kind.  Exposed  to  those  innumerable 
modifications  of  conditions  which  the  earth's  surface  af- 
forded, here  in  amount  of  light,  there  in  amount  of  heat, 
and  elsewhere  in  the  mineral  quality  of  its  aqueous  medium, 
this  extremely  changeable  substance  must  have  undergone, 
now  one,  now  another,  of  its  countless  metamorphoses. 
And  to  the  mutual  influences  of  its  metamorphic  forms, 
under  favoring  conditions,  we  may  ascribe  the  production 
of  the  still  more  composite,  still  more  sensitive,  still  more 
variously-changeable  portions  of  organic  matter,  which,  iu 
masses  more  minute  and  simpler  than  existing  protozotty 
displayed  actions  varying  little  by  little  into  those  called 
vital  actions,  which  protein  itself  exhibits  in  a  certain  de- 
gree, and  which  the  lowest  known  living  things  exhibit 
only  in  a  greater  degree.  Thus,  setting  out  with  induc- 
tions from  the  experiences  of  organic  chemists  at  the  one 
extreme,  and  with  inductions  from  the  observations  of 
biologists  at  the  other  extreme,  we  are  enabled  to  de- 
ductively bridge  the  interval — are  enabled  to  conceive  how 
organic  compounds  were  evolved,  and  how,  by  a  continuance 
of  the  process,  the  nascent  life  displayed  in  these  becomes 
gradually  more  pronounced."  * 

It  is  in  this  way  that  Spencer  accounts  for  the  forma- 
tion of  the  cell  which  becomes  developed  into  a  living 
organism,  out  of  which  are  successively  evolved  all  the 
higher  forms  of  animal  organisms,  until  we  reach  man. 

SoPHEREUS.  And  is  this  put  forward  as  something 
which  rational  people  are  to  believe  ? 

*  "  Biology,"  i,  Appendix,  pp.  483,  484. 


352  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

KosMioos.  Undoubtedly  it  is  put  forward  as  something 
that  is  to  be  belieYed,  because  it  is  supported  by  a  vast  ar- 
ray of  evidence  ;  and  let  me  tell  you  that  this  conception 
of  Nature  as  a  whole  is  the  consummate  flower  of  this 
nineteenth  century  in  the  domain  of  philosophic  specu- 
lation. 

SoPHEREUS.  Perhaps  it  is.  But  although  this  nine- 
teenth century  has  witnessed  many  great  scientific  discov- 
eries, and  has  produced  extraordinary  inventions,  I  do  not 
find  that  among  the  speculative  philosophers  of  this  age 
there  are  such  very  superior  powers  of  reasoning  displayed 
that  we  ought  to  regard  them  as  authorities  entitled  to 
challenge  our  acceptance  of  their  theories  without  exami- 
nation. I  must  say  that  among  your  scientific  people  of 
the  present  day,  and  especially  among  the  philosophers  of 
the  class  of  which  Mr.  Spencer  is  the  leading  representa- 
tive, there  are  certain  tendencies  and  defects  which  surprise 
me.  One  of  their  defects  is  that  they  do  not  obviate  re- 
mote difficulties,  perhaps  because  they  have  not  been  trained, 
as  other  men  have,  to  foresee  where  such  difficulties  must 
arise.  This  is  sometimes  apparent  even  when  the  difficul- 
ties are  not  very  remote,  but  are  quite  obvious.  One  of 
their  tendencies  is  to  arrive  at  a  theory  from  some  of  the 
phenomena,  and  then  to  strain  the  remaining  phenomena 
to  suit  the  theory  ;  and  sometimes  they  proceed  to  the  in- 
vention or  imagination  of  phenomena  which  are  necessary 
to  the  completion  of  a  chain  of  proof.  This  last  process  is 
called  bridging  the  interval.  I  will  now  apply  this  criti- 
cism to  Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy  of  the  origin  of  man.  In 
the  first  place  he  has  not  obviated  a  fundamental  difficulty, 
whether  it  be  a  near  or  a  remote  one.  Where  did  the 
molecules  get  their  tendency  or  capacity  to  arrange  them- 
selves into  higher  and  more  complex  forms  ?  Whence 
came  the  auxiliary  or  additional  force  of  their  surrounding 
environment  ?    What  endowed  protein  with  its  capacity 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  THE  WORLD.  353 

to  assume  a  thousand  isomeric  forms  ?  What  made  the 
favoring  conditions  which  have  helped  on.  the  influence 
of  its  metamorphic  tendencies,  so  as  to  produce  still  more 
sensitive  and  variously-changeable  portions  of  organic  mat- 
ter ?  These  questions,  must  have  an  answer;  and,  when 
we  ask  them,  we  see  the  significance  of  the  inquiry,  "  Where 
wast  thou  (man)  when  I  laid  the  foundations  of  the  world  ?  " 
For  these  things,  on  the  evolution  theory,  are  the  founda- 
tions of  the  world.  It  is  no  answer  to  say,  as  Mr.  Spencer 
does,  that  these  tendencies,  or  capacities  of  matter,  and 
these  laws  of  the  favoring  conditions,  came  from  the  Un- 
known Cause.  Known  or  unknown,  did  they  have  a  cause, 
or  did  they  make  themselves  ?  Did  these,  the  foundations 
of  the  world,  have  an  origin,  or  were  they  without  any 
origin  ?  If  they  had  an  origin,  was  it  from  the  will  and 
power  of  a  being  capable  of  giving  existence  to  them  and 
prescribing  their  modes  of  action  ?  If  they  had  no  origin, 
if  they  existed  from  all  eternity,  how  came  it  that  they 
formed  this  extraordinary  habit  of  invariable  action  in  a 
certain  method,  which  amid  all  its  multiformity  shows  an 
astonishing  persistency  ?  If  we  deny,  with  Mr.  Spencer, 
the  absolute  commencement  of  organic  life  on  the  globe, 
we  must  still  go  back  of  all  the  traces  of  organic  life,  and 
inquire  whence  matter,  molecules,  organized  or  unorgan- 
ized, derived  the  capacities  or  tendencies  to  become  organ- 
ized, and  how  the  favoring  conditions  became  established 
as  auxiliary  or  subsidiary  forces.  And  therefore  it  is  that 
this  diflSculty,  whether  remote  or  near  at  hand,  is  not  met 
by  Mr.  Spencer  :  for  whether  we  call  the  cause  an  unknown 
or  a  known  cause,  the  question  is.  Was  there  a  cause,  or  did 
the  foundations  of  the  world  lay  themselves  ?  The  reason- 
ing powers  of  mankind,  exercised  by  daily  observation  of 
cause  and  effect,  of  creative  power  and  created  product,  are 
equal  to  the  conception  of  a  First  Cause  as  a  being  who 
could  have  laid  the  foundations  of  the  world,  but  they  are 


354  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

utterly  unequal  to  the  conception  that  they  had  no  origin 
whateyer.  Again,  consider  how  numerous  are  the  missing 
links  in  the  chain  of  evolution,  how  many  gaps  are  filled 
up  by  pure  inventions  or  assumptions.  The  evolution  of 
one  distinct  and  perfect  animal,  or  being,  out  of  a  pre- 
existing animal  or  being  of  a  different  type,  has  never  been 
proved  as  a  fact.  Yet  whole  pedigrees  of  such  generation 
of  species  have  been  constructed  upon  the  same  principles 
as  we  should  construct  the  pedigree  of  an  individual.  Fur- 
thermore, if  we  regard  the  facts  about  which  there  can  be 
no  controversy,  we  find  not  only  distinct  species  of  animals, 
but  we  find  the  same  species  divided  into  male  and  female, 
with  a  system  of  procreation  and  gestation  established  for 
the  multiplication  of  individuals  of  that  species.  Now  go 
back  to  the  imaginary  period  when  protein  began  to  form 
itself  into  something  verging  toward  organic  life,  and  then 
there  became  evolved  the  nascent  life  of  an  organized  be- 
ing. How  did  the  division  of  the  sexes  originate  ?  Did 
some  of  the  molecules  or  their  progressive  forms,  or  their 
aggregates,  or  masses,  under  some  conditions,  tend  to  the 
production  of  the  male,  and  others  under  certain  condi- 
tions tend  to  the  development  of  the  female,  so  that  the 
sexes  were  formed  by  a  mere  habit  of  arrangement  without 
any  special  intervention  ?  Here  is  one  of  the  most  serious 
diflBculties  which  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  whether  it  be 
the  Darwinian  or  the  Spencerian  theory,  has  to  encounter. 
There  is  a  division  into  male  and  female  :  there  is  a  law  of 
procreation  by  the  union  of  the  two  sexes.  This  is  a  fact 
about  which  there  can  be  no  dispute.  It  is  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  facts  in  Nature.  It  is  the  means  by  which  spe- 
cies are  continued,  and  the  world  is  peopled  with  individuals 
of  each  species.  Is  it  conceivable  that  this  occurred  with- 
out any  design,  that  it  had  no  origin  in  a  formative  will, 
that  it  had,  properly  speaking,  no  origin  at  all,  but  that  it 
grew  out  of  the  tendencies  of  organized  matter  to  take  on 


THEORETICAL  ASSUMPTIONS.  355 

such  a  diversity  in  varying  conditions  ?  And  if  the  latter 
was  all  the  origin  that  it  had,  whence  came  the  tendencies 
and  whence  the  favoring  conditions  that  helped  them  on 
toward  the  result  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  the  Spencerian 
theory,  so  far  as  it  suggests  a  mode  in  which  the  two  sexes 
of  animals  came  to  exist,  is  hardly  less  fanciful  than  what 
Plato  has  given  us  in  his  ^'Timseus."  I  have  studied  them 
both. 

If  you  will  hand  me  Mr.  Spencer's  work  from  which 
you  have  just  quoted,  I  will  point  out  a  passage  which  fully 
justifies  my  criticism.  It  is  this:  "Before  it  can  be  as- 
certained how  organized  beings  have  been  gradually  evolved, 
there  must  be  reached  the  conviction  that  they  have  been 
gradually  evolved."  He  says  this  in  praise  of  De  Maillet, 
one  of  the  earliest  of  the  modern  speculators  who  reached 
this  conviction,  and  whose  "  wild  notions  "  as  to  the  way 
should  not  make  us,  says  Mr.  Spencer,  **  forget  the  merit 
of  his  intuition  that  animals  and  plants  were  produced  by 
natural  causes."  *  That  is  to  say,  first  form  to  yourself  a 
theory,  and  have  a  thorough  conviction  of  it.  Then  in- 
vestigate, and  shape  the  facts  so  as  to  support  the  theory. 
Is  it  not  plain  that  an  inquiry  into  the  mode  in  which  or- 
ganized beings  have  been  gradually  evolved  must  precede 
any  conclusion  or  conviction  on  the  subject  ?  It  is  one  of 
those  cases  in  which  the  how  a  thing  has  been  done  lies  at 
the  basis  of  the  inquiry  whether  it  has  probably  been  done 
at  all.  If  a  suggested  mode  turns  out  to  be  wild  and  vis- 
ionary, what  is  the  value  of  any  "intuition"  of  the  main 
fact  ?  But,  what  is  stiU  more  extraordinary  in  this  kind 
of  deduction,  which  is  no  deduction,  is  the  way  in  which, 
according  to  Mr.  Spencer,  the  first  conviction  is  to  be 
reached  before  one  looks  for  the  facts.  The  process  of  the 
evolution  of  organisms,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer's  philoso- 

*  "  Biology,"  i,  p.  408. 


356  CREATION  OE  EVOLUTION? 

phy,  is  contained  as  a  part  in  the  great  whole  of  evolution 
in  general.  We  first  convince  ourselves  that  evolution  ob- 
tains in  all  the  other  departments  of  Nature,  and  is  the 
interpretation  of  all  their  phenomena.  Then  we  conclude 
that  it  has  obtained  in  the  animal  kingdom,  and  so  we  have 
the  conviction  necessary  to  be  acquired  before  we  examine 
the  phenomena  ;  and  then  we  make  that  investigation  so  as 
to  reconcile  the  facts  with  the  supposed  universal  laws  of 
matter  and  motion.  I  do  not  exaggerate  in  the  least.  Here 
is  what  he  says  :  "  Only  when  the  process  of  evolution  of 
organisms  is  affiliated  on  the  process  of  evolution  in  general 
can  it  be  truly  said  to  be  explained.  The  thing  required  is 
to  show  that  its  various  results  are  corollaries  from  first 
principles.  We  have  to  reconcile  the  facts  with  the  uni- 
versal laws  of  the  redistribution  of  matter  and  motion."  * 
What  would  Bacon  have  thought  of  this  method  of  estab- 
lishing the  probable  truth  of  a  theory  ?  It  leaves  out  of 
consideration  a  multitude  of  facts,  and  one  of  them  at  least 
is  of  the  utmost  importance.  It  is  that  in  the  domain  of 
animated  matter,  in  organized  beings,  and  most  signally  in 
the  animal  kingdom,  there  is  a  principle  of  life  ;  and,  what- 
ever may  be  the  universal  laws  of  the  redistribution  of  mat- 
ter and  motion,  in  their  operation  upon  or  among  the  prod- 
ucts which  are  not  endowed  with  this  principle,  when  we 
come  to  reason  about  products  that  are  endowed  with  it 
we  are  not  entitled  to  conclude  that  this  principle  of  ani- 
mal life  is  itself  a  product  of  the  operation  of  those  laws 
because  they  have  resulted  in  products  which  do  not  possess 
life,  or  life  of  the  same  kind.  In  order  to  reach  the  con- 
viction that  animal  organisms  have  resulted  solely  from  the 
operation  of  the  laws  of  matter  and  motion,  we  must  not 
undertake  to  reconcile  the  facts  with  those  laws,  but  we 
must  have  some  evidence  that  those  laws  have  produced 

*  "  Biology,"  i,  pp.  409,  410. 


BEGIiTNING  OF  ORGANIC  LIFE.  357 

living  beings  with  comi^lex  and  diyersified  organisms,  and 
this  evidence  must  at  least  tend  to  exclude  every  other  hy- 
pothesis. It  is  not  enough  to  flout  at  all  other  hypotheses, 
or  to  pronounce  them  ex  cathedra  to  be  idle  tales. 

KosMicos.  You  must  not  catch  at  single  expressions 
and  make  yourself  a  captious  critic.  That  would  be  un- 
worthy of  such  an  inquirer  as  you  profess  to  be,  and  as  I 
believe  you  are.  Mr.  Spencer  did  not  mean,  by  reconciling 
the  facts  with  the  laws  of  matter  and  motion,  that  we  are 
to  distort  the  facts.  He  meant  that  we  are  to  discover  the 
correspondence  between  the  facts  and  the  operation  of  those 
laws.  Now,  let  me  show  you  more  explicitly  that  he  is 
quite  right.  There  are  certain  laws  of  matter  and  motion, 
discoverable  and  discovered  by  scientific  investigation,  which 
prevail  throughout  all  Nature.  The  phenomena  which  they 
produce,  although  not  yet  fully  understood,  justify  the  as- 
sumption of  their  universality  and  their  modes  of  operation. 
It  is  perfectly  legitimate,  therefore,  to  reason  that  the  same 
laws  which  have  produced  the  observable  phenomena  in 
other  departments  of  Nature  have  had  a  like  potency  as 
causes  by  which  the  phenomena  in  the  animal  kingdom 
have  been  produced.  Using  this  legitimate  mode  of  rea- 
soning, Mr.  Spencer  traces  the  operation  of  those  laws  upon 
the  primal  molecules,  which  are  peculiarly  sensitive  to  their 
effects.  He  follows  them  through  the  successive  aggrega- 
tions of  higher  combinations  until  he  arrives  at  the  pro- 
toplasmic substance,  out  of  which,  from  its  capability  of 
assuming  an  infinity  of  forms,  aided  by  the  environing 
conditions,  the  simplest  organic  forms  become  evolved, 
and  thus  what  you  call  the  principle  of  life  gradually  arose 
through  a  vast  extent  of  time.  He  is  therefore  perfectly 
consistent  with  himseK  in  denying  the  absolute  commence- 
ment of  organic  life  on  the  globe  ;  for  you  must  understand 
that  he  means  by  this  to  deny  that  there  was  any  point  of 
time,  or  any  particular  organism,  at  or  in  which  animal  life 


358  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION  ? 

can  be  said  to  have  had  its  first  commencement,  without 
having  been  preceded  by  some  other  kind  of  being,  out  of 
which  the  more  highly  organized  being  has  been  produced 
by  modifications  wrought  by  insensible  gradations.  If  you 
will  attend  closely  to  his  reasoning,  you  will  see  that  you 
have  small  cause  for  criticising  it  as  you  have  ;  and,  if  you 
will  look  at  one  of  his  illustrations,  you  will  see  the  strength 
of  his  position.  Hear  what  he  says  :  **  It  is  no  more  need- 
ful to  suppose  an  absolute  commencement  of  organic  life 
or  a  '  first  organism '  than  it  is  needful  to  suppose  an  ab- 
solute commencement  of  social  life  and  a  first  social  organ- 
ism. The  assumption  of  such  a  necessity  in  this  last  case, 
made  by  early  speculators  with  their  theories  of  'social 
contracts '  and  the  like,  is  disproved  by  the  facts  ;  and  the 
facts,  so  far  as  they  are  ascertained,  disprove  the  assump- 
tion of  such  a  necessity  in  the  first  case."  *  That  is  to 
say,  as  the  social  facts,  the  social  phenomena,  disprove  the 
"social  contract"  as  an  occurrence  taking  place  by  human 
design  and  intention,  so  the  phenomena  of  animal  life  dis- 
prove the  assumption  of  such  an  occurrence  as  its  com- 
mencement by  divine  intervention,  or  its  commencement 
at  all. 

SoPHEREUS.  I  think  I  understood  all  this  before,  just 
as  you  put  it,  but  I  am  not  the  less  obliged  to  you  for  the 
restatement.  In  regard  to  society,  I  know  not  why  the 
family,  the  institution  of  marriage,  is  not  to  be  regarded  as 
the  first  social  organism,  and  the  union  of  two  or  more 
families  in  some  kind  of  mutual  league  is  certainly  the  first 
society  in  a  more  comprehensive  sense.  I  care  very  little 
about  the  theory  of  the  social  contract,  as  applied  to  more 
complex  societies,  although,  as  a  kind  of  legal  fiction,  it  is 
well  enough  for  all  the  uses  which  sound  reasoners  nowa- 
days make  of  it.     But  the  institution  of  marriage,  the 

*  "  Biology,"  i,  p.  482. 


ORIGIN  OF  LIFE.  359 

family,  is  no  fiction  at  all ;  it  is  a  fact,  however  it  was  first 
established,  and  it  was  the  absolute  commencement  of  social 
life.  But  I  do  not  hold  to  this  sort  of  analogies,  or  to  this 
mode  of  reasoning  from  what  happens  in  a  department,  in 
which  the  actions  of  men  have  largely  or  exclusively  influ- 
enced the  complex  phenomena,  to  a  department  in  which 
human  influence  has  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  phenom- 
ena. But  now  let  us  come  back  to  the  proposition  that 
there  never  was  any  absolute  commencement  of  organic  life 
on  the  globe.  I  will  take  Mr.  Spencer's  meaning — his  de- 
nial, as  you  put  it — and  will  test  it  by  one  or  two  observa- 
tions upon  his  own  explanation,  as  given  in  the  elaborate 
paper  in  which  he  replied  to  a  critic  in  the  "  North  Ameri- 
can Review"  a  little  more  than  four  years  ago.*  In  the 
first  place,  then,  as  to  time.  It  will  not  do  to  say  that 
there  never  was  a  time  when  such  a  product  as  life,  ani- 
mated or  organized  life,  had  its  first  existence.  To  what- 
ever it  owed  its  existence,  it  must  at  some  time  have  begun 
to  exist.  It  matters  not  how  far  back  in  the  ages  of  the 
globe  you  place  it :  you  must  contemplate  a  time  when  it 
did  not  exist,  and  a  point  of  time  at  which  it  began  to  exist. 
It  matters  not  that  you  can  not  fix  this  time.  There  was 
such  a  time,  whether  you  can  fix  it  chronologically  or  not. 
In  the  next  place,  however  minute  the  supposed  gradations 
which  you  trace  backward  from  a  recognizable  organism  to 
the  primal  protoplasmic  substance,  out  of  which  you  sup- 
pose it  to  have  been  gradually  evolved,  and  through  what- 
ever extent  of  time  you  imagine  these  gradations  to  have 
been  worked  out  by  the  operation  of  the  forces  of  Nature, 
modifying  successive  beings,  you  must  find  an  organism  to 
which  you  can  attribute  life.  Whatever  that  organism  was, 
it  was  the  commencement  of  organic  life ;  for,  when  you 
go  back  of  it  in  the  series,  you  come  to  something  that  was 

*  Now  contained  in  "  Biology,"  i,  Appendix. 


360  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

not  organic  life,  but  was  merely  a  collection  of  molecules 
or  a  product  of  aggregated  molecules,  that  had  a  capacity 
to  be  developed  into  an  animated  organism  under  favorable 
conditions.  **It  is,"  says  Mr.  Spencer,  "by  the  action  of 
the  successively  higher  forms  on  one  another,  joined  with 
the  action  of  environing  conditions,  that  the  highest  forms 
are  reached."  Some  one,  then,  of  those  highest  forms, 
something  that  can  be  called  an  animal  organism,  some 
being  endowed  with  life,  was  the  commencement  of  organic 
life  on  the  globe  ;  and  it  is  just  as  correct  and  necessary  to 
speak  of  it  as  the  "absolute"  commencement  as  it  is  when 
we  speak  of  Darwin's  aquatic  grub,  or  of  the  Mosaic  ac- 
count of  the  creation  of  the  different  animals  by  the  hand 
and  will  of  God.  Neither  Mr.  Spencer  nor  any  other  man 
can  construct  a  chain  of  animated  existence  back  into  the 
region  of  its  non-existence  without  showing  that  it  began  to 
have  an  existence.  He  can  say  that  the  affirmation  of  uni- 
versal evolution  is  in  itself  a  negation  of  an  absolute  com- 
mencement of  anything.  And  so  it  is  theoretically.  But 
this  does  not  get  over  the  difficulty.  On  his  own  explana- 
tion of  the  mode  in  which  organisms  have  been  evolved, 
there  must  have  been  a  first  organism,  and  in  that  first  or- 
ganism life  began.  So  that  I  am  not  yet  prepared  to  yield 
my  criticism,  or  to  yield  my  convictions  to  a  writer  who  is 
so  much  carried  away  by  his  theory. 

KosMicos.  But  you  will  allow  that  the  theory  is  perfect 
in  itself  ;  and  why,  then,  do  you  say  that  he  is  carried  away 
by  it  ?  You  ought  either  to  give  up  your  criticism,  or  to 
show  that  there  is  a  superior  hypothesis  by  which  to  ac- 
count for  the  origin  of  organisms,  and  one  that  is  supported 
by  stronger  proofs  and  better  reasoning.  You  have  nothing 
to  oppose  to  Mr.  Spencer's  explanation  of  the  origin  of 
organic  life,  excepting  the  fable  which  you  find  in  the  book 
of  Genesis. 

S0PHEREU8.  Undoubtedly  the  opposite  hypothesis  is  that 


NECESSITY  FOR  AN  ACTOR.  361 

which  attributes  to  a  Creator  the  production  of  organic  life  ; 
and  whether  the  Mosaic  account,  as  it  stands,  be  a  fable  or 
a  true  narrative  of  an  actual  occurrence,  what  we  have  to 
do  is  to  ascertain,  upon  correct  principles  of  reasoning, 
whether  the  creating  power  can  be  dispensed  with.  Mr. 
Spencer  dispenses  with  it  altogether.  He  gives  it  a  direct 
negative  in  the  most  absolute  manner.  But  the  perfection 
of  his  theory  depends  upon  its  ability  to  sustain  itself  as  an 
explanation  of  the  existence  of  organisms  without  the  in- 
tervention of  a  creating  power  anywhere  at  any  time.  I 
have  already  suggested  the  serious  defect  of  his  whole  phil- 
osophic scheme  as  applied  to  the  existence  of  organisms, 
namely,  that  the  foundation  of  the  theory,  the  existence  of 
the  molecules  with  their  properties  and  capacities  tending 
to  rearrangement  under  the  laws  of  matter  and  motion, 
those  laws  themselves,  and  the  environing  conditions  which 
assist  the  process  of  adjustment  and  combination,  must  all 
have  had  an  origin,  or  a  cause.  If  we  can  get  along  with- 
out that  origin,  without  any  cause,  without  any  actor  lay- 
ing the  foundations  of  the  world,  we  can  make  a  theory. 
But  that  theory  can  not  sustain  itself  by  such  a  negation  if 
all  experience,  observation,  and  reflection  amount  to  any- 
thing ;  for  these  all  point  in  one  direction.  They  all  tend 
to  show  that  every  existing  thing  must  have  had  a  cause, 
that  every  product  must  have  had  an  origin,  and,  if  we 
place  that  origin  in  the  operation  of  certain  laws  of  matter 
and  motion  upon  and  among  the  primal  molecules  of  mat- 
ter, we  still  have  to  look  for  the  origin  of  those  laws  and 
of  the  molecules  on  which  they  have  operated.  If  we  say 
that  these  things  had  no  origin,  that  they  existed  without 
having  been  caused  to  exist,  we  end  in  a  negation  at  which 
reason  at  once  rebels.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  reject,  as 
we  must  reject,  this  negation,  then  the  same  power  which 
could  establish  the  laws  ^of  matter  and  motion,  and  give 
origin  to  the  molecules  and  the  favoring  conditions  by  which 


862  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

their  aggregated  higher  forms  are  supposed  to  have  been 
deyeloped,  was  alike  capable  of  the  direct  production  of 
species,  the  creation  of  the  sexes,  and  the  establishment 
of  the  laws  of  procreation  and  gestation.  So  that  it  be- 
comes a  question  of  probability,  of  the  weight  of  evidence, 
as  to  whether  we  can  explain  the  phenomena  of  species,  of 
the  sexual  division  and  the  sexual  union,  with  all  that  they 
involve,  without  the  hjrpothesis  of  direct  intervention,  de- 
sign, and  formative  skill  of  a  boundless  character.  I  have 
seen  no  explanation  of  the  origin  of  species  and  of  the  sex- 
ual distinction,  with  its  concomitant  methods  of  reproduc- 
tion, that  does  not  end  in  an  utter  blank,  whenever  it 
undertakes  to  dispense  with  that  kind  of  direct  design  to 
which  is  derisively  given  the  name  of  ''miraculous  inter- 
position," but  which  in  truth  implies  no  miracle  at  all. 

KosMicos.  I  have  to  be  perpetually  recalling  you  to  the 
first  principles  of  Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy.  You  seem  to 
think  it  enough  to  point  to  the  existence  of  species  and  the 
sexual  division,  as  if  his  philosophy  did  not  afford  the 
means  of  accounting  for  them  by  the  operation  of  natural 
causes.  Let  me  put  to  you,  then,  this  question  :  If  natural 
causes  have  produced  a  crystal,  by  successive  new  combina- 
tions of  molecules  of  matter  through  gradations  rising  suc- 
cessively into  higher  forms,  why  should  not  natural  causes, 
acting  upon  other  molecules  in  a  corresponding  way,  have 
produced  organic  life,  or  animated  organisms  ?  If  natural 
causes  have  evolved  out  of  certain  molecules  the  substance 
known  as  organizable  protein,  why  should  not  the  con- 
tinued operation  of  the  same  or  similar  causes  have  modi- 
fied organizable  protein  into  some  distinct  and  recognizable 
animated  organism  ?  If  you  admit  this  as  a  possible  or 
highly  probable  result,  why  should  not  natural  causes  have 
produced,  in  the  course  of  millions  of  years,  the  division 
of  the  sexes  and  the  methods  of  procreation  and  multi- 
plication ? 


NATURAL  CAUSES  LIMITED.  363 

SoPHEEEUS.  I  will  assign  the  reasons  for  not  adopting 
the  conclusions  to  which  you  expect  me  to  arrive,  in  a  cer- 
tain order.  In  the  first  place,  the  capacity  of  certain  mole- 
cules to  result  in  the  formation  of  a  crystal,  under  the  op- 
eration of  what  you  call  natural  causes,  requires  that  the 
molecules,  their  capacity,  and  the  natural  causes  should  all 
have  had  an  origin,  call  it  known  or  unknown.  The  cause 
was  of  equal  potency  to  produce  the  crystal  directly,  or  any- 
thing else  that  exists  in  Nature.  The  same  thing  is  true  of 
certain  other  molecules  which,  under  the  operation  of  the  so- 
called  natural  causes,  have  resulted  in  organizable  protein. 
There  must  have  been  an  origin  to  the  molecules,  to  their 
capacity,  and  to  the  laws  which  effect  their  combinations ; 
and  this  cause  could  equally  fashion  an  organism  and 
fashion  it  in  the  related  forms  of  male  and  female  by  direct 
intervention,  for  to  such  a  power  there  is  no  assignable 
limit.  In  the  next  place,  the  distinction  between  inani- 
*mate  and  animated  matter,  between  beings  endowed  and 
beings  not  endowed  with  animal  life,  is  a  distinction  that 
can  not  be  overlooked  ;  for,  although  we  find  this  distinc- 
tion to  be  a  fact  that  has  resulted  after  the  operation  of 
whatever  causes  may  have  produced  it,  we  must  still  note 
that  there  is  a  distinction,  and  a  very  important  one.  It 
may  be  that  the  dividing  line  is  very  difficult  of  detection ; 
that  it  is  impossible  to  determine  in  all  cases  just  where 
organizable  matter  passes  from  dead  matter  into  a  living 
organism.  But  that  at  some  point  there  has  arisen  a  living 
organism,  however  produced,  is  certain.  Now,  suppose 
that  what  you  call  natural  causes  have  operated  to  bring 
organizable  matter  up  to  this  dividing  line,  the  question  is, 
whether  we  can  conclude  that  they  have  had  the  potency 
to  pass  that  line,  and  to  lead  of  themselves  to  all  the  vary- 
ing and  manifold  results  of  species,  the  division  of  th^  sexes, 
and  all  that  follows  that  division.  Certain  great  facts 
seem  to  me  to  negative  this  conclusion.  The  first  is,  that 
17 


364  CKEATIO^  OR  EVOLUTION? 

we  have  species,  which  differ  absolutely  from  each  other  as 
organisms,  in  their  modes  of  life,  and  their  destinies,  how- 
ever strong  may  be  the  resemblances  which  obtain  among 
them  in  certain  respects.  The  second  fact  is,  that  each  of 
the  true  species  is  divided  into  the  related  forms  of  male 
and  female,  and  is  placed  under  a  law  of  procreation,  by 
the  sexual  union,  for  the  multiplication  of  individuals  of 
that  species.  The  third  fact  is,  that  no  crosses  take  place 
in  Nature  between  different  species  of  animals — between  the 
true  species — ^resulting  in  a  third  species,  or  a  third  animal. 
It  is  true  that  multiplication  of  individuals  of  some  of  the 
lowest  organisms  takes  place  without  the  bisexual  process 
of  procreation,  as  where,  in  the  severance  of  a  part  of  an 
organism  the  severed  part  grows,  under  favorable  conditions, 
into  a  perfect  organism  of  the  same  kind,  as  in  the  analo- 
gous phenomenon  of  a  plant  propagated  by  a  branch  or  a 
slip  from  the  parent  stem.  But  this  occurrence  does  not 
take  place  among  the  animals  which  are  placed  for  their 
multiplication  under  the  law  of  the  sexual  union  and  the 
sexual  procreation.  The  sexual  division,  therefore,  the  law 
of  sexual  procreation,  and  all  that  they  involve,  have  to  be 
accounted  for.  Can  they  be  accounted  for  by  the  theory 
of  evolution  ?  Wherever  you  place  their  first  occurrence, 
you  have  to  find  a  process  adequate  to  their  production. 
What,  then,  entitles  you  to  say  that  the  hypothesis  of  their 
production,  by  the  capacity  and  tendency  of  organizable 
substances,  when  they  have  reached  certain  combinations, 
is  superior  to  the  hypothesis  of  a  direct  interposition  and  a 
formative  will  ?  At  the  outset,  you  must  begin  with  some 
interposition  and  some  formative  will ;  you  must  account 
for  the  existence  of  the  very  capacities  of  matter  to  become 
organized  under  the  laws  of  the  redistribution  of  matter 
and  motion,  or  you  will  end  nowhere  whatever.  If  you 
assume,  as  you  must,  that,  iA  laying  '*  the  foundations  of 
the  world,"  there  was  exercised  some  interposition  and  some 


NATURAL  CAUSES  LIMITED.  365 

formative  will,  you  have  a  power  which  was  just  as  adequate 
to  the  production  of  species,  and  their  sexual  division,  as 
it  was  to  the  endowment  of  matter  with  certain  properties 
and  capacities,  and  the  establishment  of  any  laws  for  the 
redistribution  of  matter  and  motion.  If  you  deny  the  ex- 
istence and  potency  of  the  original  power  in  the  one  pro- 
duction you  must  deny  them  in  the  other.  If  you  concede 
them  in  the  one  case,  you  must  concede  them  in  the  other. 
Now,  although  the  original  power  was  equal  to  the  endow- 
ment of  organizable  matter  with  its  capacities  for  and  tend- 
encies to  organization,  and  may  be  theoretically  assumed 
to  have  made  that  endowment,  the  question  is,  whether 
these  capacities  and  tendencies,  without  special  formative 
interposition,  and  by  the  mere  force  of  what  you  call  natu- 
ral causes,  were  equal  to  the  production  of  such  phenomena 
as  the  division  of  the  sexes  and  all  that  follows  that  divis- 
ion. Can  it  with  any  truth  be  said  that  the  so-called 
natural  causes  have  produced  any  phenomena  which  can  be 
compared,  on  the  question  of  special  design,  to  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  sexual  division,  the  law  of  sexual  procrea- 
tion, and  the  whole  system  of  the  multiplication  of  indi- 
viduals of  distinct  and  true  species  ?  When  I  can  see  any 
facts  which  will  warrant  the  belief  that  the  origin  of  the 
sexes  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  capacity  of  organizable  pro- 
tein to  form  itself  into  new  compounds,  to  the  capacity  of 
these  new  compounds  to  become  living  organisms,  and  to 
the  capacity  of  these  living  organisms,  without  the  inter- 
vention of  any  formative  will  specially  designing  the  result, 
to  divide  themselves  into  related  forms  of  male  and  female, 
to  establish  for  themselves  the  law  of  procreation,  and  to 
limit  that  procreation  to  the  same  species,  I  shall,  perhaps, 
begin  to  see  some  ground  for  the  superior  claims  of  the 
evolution  hypothesis.  I  should  like,  by-the-by,  to  see  a 
system  of  classification  of  animal  organisms,  based  exclu- 
sively on  the  distinction  between  the  bisexual  and  the  uni- 


366  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

sexual,  or  the  non-sexual,  methods  of  reproduction,  and 
without  running  it  out  into  the  analogies  of  the  vegetable 
world.  I  fancy  that  it  would  be  found  extremely  difficult 
to  account  for  the  bisexual  division  without  reaching  the 
conclusion  that  it  required  and  was  effected  by  a  special 
interposition.  At  all  events,  I  should  like  to  see  it  explained 
how  the  asexual  and  the  unisexual  construction  passed 
into  the  bisexual  by  the  mere  operation  of  what  you  call 
natural  causes. 

KosMicos.  You  said,  a  while  ago,  that  you  had  never 
learned  any  nursery-stories.  Yet,  all  along,  you  seem  to  me 
to  have  been  under  the  influence  of  the  Mosaic  account  of 
the  creation.  Of  course  you  have  read  it,  and,  although  you 
did  not  learn  anything  about  it  in  childhood,  and  now  try 
to  treat  it  solely  as  a  hypothesis,  without  any  regard  to  its 
claims  as  a  divinely  inspired  narrative,  it  is  certainly  worth 
your  while  to  see  how  completely  it  becomes  an  idle  tale  of 
the  nursery  when  scientific  tests  are  applied  to  it.  Hear 
what  Spencer  says  about  the  creation  of  man,  as  given  by 
Moses :  "  The  old  Hebrew  idea  that  God  takes  clay  and 
molds  a  new  creature,  as  a  potter  might  mold  a  vessel,  is 
probably  too  grossly  anthropomorphic  to  be  accepted  by 
any  modem  defender  of  special  creations." 

SOPHEREUS.  Let  us  see  about  this.  Let  us  discard  all 
idea  of  the  source  from  which  Moses  received  his  informa- 
tion of  the  occurrences  which  he  relates,  and  put  his  ac- 
count upon  the  same  level  with  Plato's  description  of  the 
origin  of  animals,  and  with  the  Darwinian  or  Spencerian 
theory  of  that  origin  ;  regarding  all  three  of  them,  that  is 
to  say,  as  mere  hypotheses.  Whatever  may  be  the  supposed 
conflict  between  the  Mosaic  account  of  the  creation  and  the 
conclusions  of  geologists  concerning  the  periods  during 
which  the  earth  may  have  become  formed  as  we  now  find 
it,  the  question  is,  on  the  one  hand,  whether  the  Hebrew 
historian's  account  of  the  process  of  creation  is  a  concej)- 


THE  MOSAIC  CREATION.  367 

tion  substantially  the  same  as  that  at  which  we  should  have 
arrived  from  a  study  of  Nature  if  we  had  never  had  that 
account  transmitted  to  us  from  a  period  when  the  traditions 
of  mankind  were  taking  the  shapes  in  which  they  have 
reached  us  from  different  sources  ;  or  whether,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  so  "  grossly  anthropomorphic  "  and  absurd  that 
it  is  not  worthy  of  any  consideration  as  an  occurrence  that 
it  will  bear  the  slightest  test  of  scientific  scrutiny.  Let  any 
one  take  the  Mosaic  narrative,  and,  divesting  himself  of  all 
influence  of  supposed  inspiration  or  divine  authority  speak- 
ing through  the  chosen  servant  of  God,  and  disregarding 
the  meaning  of  those  obscure  statements  which  divide  the 
stages  of  the  work  into  the  first  and  the  second  "  day,"  etc., 
let  him  follow  out  the  order  in  which  the  Creator  is  said  by 
Moses  to  have  acted.  He  will  find  in  the  narrative  an 
immense  condensation,  highly  figurative  expressions,  and 
many  elliptical  passages.  But  he  will  also  find  that  the 
Creator  is  described  as  proceeding  in  the  exertion  of  his 
omnipotent  power  in  a  manner  which  we  should  be  very 
likely  to  deduce  from  a  study  of  his  works  without  this 
narrative.  "We  have,  first,  the  reduction  of  the  earth  from 
its  chaotic  condition — *' without  form  and  void" — to  the 
separation  of  its  elemental  substances  ;  then  the  creation  of 
light ;  the  separation  of  earth  and  water  ;  the  productive 
capacity  of  the  dry  land  ;  the  establishment  of  the  vegeta- 
ble kingdom,  each  product  ''  after  its  kind  "  ;  the  forma- 
tion of  the  heavenly  bodies  as  lights  in  the  firmament,  to 
make  the  division  of  day  and  night,  seasons  and  years.  It 
is  obviously  immaterial,  so  far  as  this  order  of  the  work  is 
concerned,  down  to  the  stage  when  the  formation  of  the 
first  animals  took  place,  in  what  length  of  time  this  first 
stage  of  the  work  was  accomplished ;  whether  it  was  done 
by  an  Omnipotence  that  could  speak  things  into  existence 
by  a  word,  or  whether  the  process  was  carried  on  through 
periods  of  time  of  which  we  can  have  no  measure,  and  by 


368  OREATIOJT  OR  EVOLUTION? 

the  operation  of  infinitely  slow-moving  agencies  selected 
and  employed  for  the  accomplishment  of  a  certain  result. 
Confining  our  attention  to  the  first  stage  of  the  work  as  we 
find  it  described,  we  have  the  formation  of  the  earth,  light, 
air,  the  heavenly  bodies,  alternations  of  day  and  night, 
seasons  and  years,  and  the  vegetable  kingdom,  before  any 
animal  creation.  We  then  come  to  the  formation  of  ani- 
mals which  are  to  inhabit  this  convenient  abode,  and  which 
are  described  as  taking  place  in  the  following  order  :  first 
the  water  animals,  the  fowls  of  the  air,  and  the  beasts  of 
the  field,  "  each  after  its  kind " ;  then,  and  finally,  the 
creation  of  man.  Respecting  his  creation,  we  are  told  that 
it  was  the  purpose  of  the  Almighty  to  make  a  being  after  a 
very  different  "  image  "  from  that  of  any  other  creature  on 
the  earth  ;  and  whatever  may  be  the  true  interpretation  of 
the  language  employed,  whether  man  was  created  literally 
"  in  our  image,  after  our  likeness,"  or  according  to  an  im- 
age and  a  likeness  of  which  his  Creator  had  conceived,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  what  Moses  described  as  the  purpose 
of  God  was  to  make  a  being  differing  absolutely  from  all 
the  other  animals  by  a  broad  line  of  demarkation  which  is 
perfectly  discoverable  through  all  the  resemblances  that 
obtain  between  him  and  all  the  other  living  creatures.  To 
this  new  being  there  was  given,  we  are  told,  dominion  over  all 
the  other  animals,  and  the  fruits  of  the  earth  were  assigned 
to  him  for  food  ;  he  was  formed  out  of  the  dust  of  the  earth, 
the  breath  of  life  was  breathed  into  his  nostrils,  and  he  be- 
came **  a  living  soul."  Let  us  now  see  if  this  statement  of 
the  creation  of  man  is  so  "grossly  anthropomorphic"  as  is 
supposed.  You  are  aware  that  Buffon,  who  was  certainly 
no  mean  naturalist  or  philosopher,  and  who  was  uninflu- 
enced by  the  idea  that  the  book  of  Genesis  was  an  inspired 
production,  reached  the  conclusion  that  a  study  of  nature 
renders  the  order  of  man's  creation  as  described  by  Moses  a 
substantially  true  hypothesis.     '*  We  are  persuaded,"  said 


THE  MOSAIC  CREATION.  369 

Buffon,  '*  independently  of  the  authority  of  the  sacred 
books,  that  man  was  created  last,  and  that  he  only  came  to 
wield  the  scepter  of  the  earth  when  that  earth  was  found 
worthy  of  his  sway."  *  You  evolutionists  will  say  that  this 
may  be  very  true  upon  your  hypothesis  of  his  gradual  de- 
velopment out  of  other  animals,  through  untold  periods  of 
time.  But  now  let  us  see  whether  Moses  was  so  grossly 
unscientific,  upon  the  supposition  that  God  created  man  as 
he  describes.  -  If  man  was  created,  or  molded,  by  the 
Deity,  he  was  formed,  in  his  physical  structure,  out  of  mat- 
ter ;  and  all  matter  may  be  figuratively  and  even  scientific- 
ally described  as  *'  the  dust  of  the  earth,"  or  as  "  clay," 
or  by  any  other  term  that  will  give  an  idea  of  a  substance 
that  was  not  spirit.  If  Moses  had  said  that  man's  body 
was  formed  out  of  the  constituent  elements  of  matter,  or 
some  of  them,  he  would  have  said  nothing  that  a  modem 
believer  in  special  creations  need  shrink  from,  for  he  would 
have  stated  an  indisputable  fact.  He  stated  in  one  form 
of  expression  the  very  same  fact  that  a  modern  scientist 
would  have  to  state  in  another  form,  whatever  might  have 
been  the  mode,  or  the  power,  or  the  time  in  or  by  which 
the  constituent  elements  were  brought  together  and  molded 
into  the  human  body.  So  that  the  derisive  figure  of  God 
taking  clay  and  molding  it  into  the  human  form,  as  a  potter 
would  mold  a  vessel,  does  not  strike  me  as  presenting  any 
proof  that  the  account  given  by  Moses  is  so  destitute  of 
scientific  accuracy,  or  as  rendering  his  statements  a  ridicu- 
lous hypothesis. 

KosMicos.  Well,  then,  it  comes  at  last  to  this  :  that  you 
consider  the  substance  of  the  Mosaic  account  of  the  creation, 
independent  of  its  authority  as  an  inspired  statement,  to  be 

*  Quoted  by  M.  Guizot  in  his  "  ffistory  of  France,"  vol.  vi,  p.  823. 
Guizot  observes  that  Buffon  was  "  absolutely  unshackled  by  any  religious 
prejudice,"  and  that  he  "  involuntarily  recurred  to  the  account  given  in 
Genesis." 


370  OBEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

entitled  to  stand  as  a  hypothesis  against  the  explanations 
given  to  us  by  the  scientists  of  the  great  modern  school  of 
evolution,  notwithstanding  those  explanations  are  in  one 
form  or  another  now  accepted  by  the  most  advanced  scien- 
tific thinkers  and  explorers  ? 

SoPHEREUS.  I  certainly  do.  But  understand  me  ex- 
plicitly. As,  after  my  study  of  the  probable  origin  of  the 
solar  system,  and  our  discussion  of  that  subject,  I  expressed 
my  conclusion  that  the  phenomena  called  for  and  mani- 
fested the  exercise  of  a  formative  will  by  some  acts  of  spe- 
cial creation,  so  now,  in  reference  to  the  animal  kingdom, 
I  have  reached  the  same  conclusion,  for  reasons  which  I 
have  endeavored  to  assign.  I  can  see  that  the  operation  of 
the  process  which  you  call  evolution  may  have  caused  cer- 
tain limited  modifications  in  the  structure  and  habits  of 
life  of  different  animals  ;  or  rather,  that  limited  modifica- 
tions of  structure  and  habits  of  life  have  occurred,  and 
hence  you  deduce  what  you  call  the  process  of  evolution. 
But  to  me  this  entirely  fails  to  account  for,  or  to  suggest 
a  rational  explanation  of,  the  distinct  existence  of  species, 
their  division  into  male  and  female,  and  the  establishment 
of  the  laws  of  procreation  by  which  individuals  of  a  species 
are  multiplied — a  process  which  does  not  admit  of  the 
production  of  individuals  of  an  essentially  different  type 
from  the  parents,  and  which,  so  far  as  we  have  any  means 
of  knowledge,  has  never  commenced  in  one  species  and 
ended  in  another,  in  any  length  of  time  that  can  be  ima- 
gined, or  through  any  series  of  modifications. 

KosMicos.  Let  us  postpone  the  farther  discussion  of  the 
origin  of  species  to  some  future  time,  when  I  will  endeavor 
to  convince  you  that  both  Darwin  and  Spencer  have  satis- 
factorily accounted  for  them. 

SoPHEREUS.  Very  well ;  I  shall  be  glad  to  be  enlight- 
ened. 


THE  SINGLE-CELL  HYPOTHESIS.  371 


THE  SINGLE-CELL  HYPOTHESIS. 

Note. — It  will  readily  occur  to  the  reader  that  Sophereus  might  most 
pertinently  have  asked :  Whence  did  the  primal  cell  originate  ?  It  is  con- 
ceived of  as  the  ultimate  unit  of  organizable  matter ;  invisible  to  the  naked 
eye,  perhaps  incapable  of  being  reached  by  the  microscope,  but  consisting 
of  an  infinitesimally  small  portion  of  matter,  more  or  less  organized  in 
itself,  and  possessing  a  capacity  to  unite  with  itself  other  minute  particles 
of  matter,  and  so  to  form  larger  aggregates  of  molecules.  The  hypothesis 
is,  that  this  single  cell  has  given  origin  to  all  animated  organisms,  and, 
through  an  indefinite  series  of  such  organisms,  to  the  human  race.  The 
single  cell,  then,  having  this  capacity  and  this  extraordinary  destiny,  was 
either  the  first  and  only  one  of  its  kind,  or  it  was  one  of  many  of  the  same 
kind.  If  we  select  any  supposed  point  of  time  in  the  far  antecedent  history 
of  matter,  the  question  may  be  asked  whether  there  existed  at  first  but  one 
such  cell,  or  many.  If  there  were  many  of  such  cells,  how  came  they  to 
exist  ?  If  one  only  was  selected  out  of  many,  for  this  extraordinary  des- 
tiny of  giving  origin  to  all  the  animated  organisms,  who  or  what  made  the 
selection  for  this  transcendent  office  of  the  one  cell  ?  If  there  never  was 
but  one  such  cell,  how  did  it  come  to  exist  ?  As  these  questions  are  clearly 
pertinent,  the  effort  to  answer  them  inevitably  conducts  us  to  the  idea  of 
creation,  or  else  to  the  conclusion  that  the  numerous  cells  and  the  selected 
one  had  no  origin ;  that  the  selection  was  not  made,  but  was  accidental ;  or 
that  the  one  cell,  if  there  never  was  but  one,  was  not  a  created  thing. 
Human  reason  can  not  accept  this  conclusion. 


CHAPTER  X. 

"  Species,"  "  races,"  and  "  varieties  " — Sexual  division — Causation, 

The  two  friendly  disputants  have  again  met.  Sophereus 
begins  their  further  colloquy,  in  an  effort  to  reach  a  com- 
mon understanding  of  certain  terms,  so  that  they  may  not 
be  speaking  of  different  things. 

Sophereus.  I  have  more  than  once  referred  to  the  fact 
that  Nature  does  not  permit  crosses  between  the  true  spe- 
cies of  animals,  in  breeding,  and  that  we  have  no  reason  to 
suppose  it  ever  did.  This  is  a  very  important  fact  to  be 
considered  in  weighing  the  claims  of  your  theory  of  evolu- 
tion. I  have  been  looking  into  Darwin,  and  I  find  it  some- 
what uncertain  in  what  sense  he  uses  the  terms  **  species/' 
"races,"  and  "varieties."  In  his  "Descent  of  Man," he 
devotes  a  good  deal  of  space  to  the  discussion  of  the  various 
classifications  made  by  different  naturalists  under  these  re- 
spective terms ;  and  there  is  no  small  danger  of  confusion 
arising  from  the  use  of  these  terms  unless  they  are  defined. 
The  possibility  of  the  process  of  evolution,  as  a  means  of 
accounting  for  the  existence  of  any  known  animal,  depends 
in  some  degree  upon  the  animals  among  which,  by  sexual 
generation,  the  supposed  transition  from  one  kind  of  ani- 
mal to  another  kind  has  taken  place.  Darwin  speaks  of 
the  difficulty  of  defining  "  species  "  ;  and  yet  it  is  obvious 
(is  it  not  ?)  that  the  theory  of  the  graduation  of  different 
forms  into  one  another  depends  for  its  possibility  upon 
the  forms  which  have  admitted  of  interbreeding.  While, 
therefore,  the  term  "  species  "  is  in  one  sense  arbitrary,  as 


LIMITS   OF  INTERBREEDING.  373 

used  by  different  naturalists,  and  there  is  no  definition  of 
it  common  to  them  all,  it  is  still  necessary  to  have  a  clear 
idea  of  the  limits  within  which  crosses  can  take  place  in 
breeding,  because  there  are  such  limits  in  nature.  Thus, 
in  the  case  of  man,  as  known  to  us  in  history  and  by  ob- 
servation, there  are  different  families,  which  are  classed  as 
''races."  Darwin  speaks  of  the  weighty  arguments  which 
naturalists  have,  or  may  have,  for  "raising  the  races  of 
man  to  the  dignity  of  species.'''*  Whether  this  would  be 
anything  more  than  a  matter  of  scientific  nomenclature,  is 
perhaps  unnecessary  to  consider.  Whether  we  call  the 
"races  "  of  men  " species,"  or  speak  of  them  as  families  of 
one  race,  we  know  as  a  fact  that  interbreeding  can  take 
place  among  them  all,  and  that  between  man  and  any  other 
animal  it  can  not  take  place.  The  same  thing  is  true  of 
the  equine  and  the  bovine  races  and  their  several  varieties. 
Whether,  in  speaking  of  the  different  families  or  races  of 
men,  we  consider  them  all  as  one  "  species,"  or  as  different 
species — and  so  of  the  varieties  of  the  equine  or  the  bovine 
races — the  important  fact  is,  that  there  are  limits  within 
which  interbreeding  can  take  place,  and  out  of  which  it  can 
not  take  place.  Do  you  admit  or  deny  that  the  barriers 
against  sexual  generation  between  animals  of  essentially  dif- 
ferent types,  which  are  established  in  nature,  are  important 
facts  in  judging  of  the  hypothesis  of  animal  evolution  ? 

KosMicos.  Take  care  that  you  have  an  accurate  idea  of 
what  the  theory  of  evolution  is.  Apply  it,  for  example,  to 
the  origin  of  man,  as  an  animal,  proceeding  "  by  a  series 
of  forms  graduating  insensibly  from  some  ape-like  creature 
to  man  as  he  now  exists."  This  expresses  the  whole  theory 
as  applied  to  one  animal,  man,  without  going  behind  his  ape- 
like progenitors.  It  does  not  suppose  a  crossing  between 
the  ape-like  creature  and  some  other  creature  that  was  not 
an  ape.  It  supposes  a  gradual  development  of  the  ape-like 
creature  into  the  man  as  he  now  exists  ;  and,  of  course,  the 


374  OREATION"  OR  EYOLCJTION? 

interbreeding  took  place  between  the  males  and  the  females 
of  that  ape-like  race  and  their  descendants — the  descend- 
ants, through  a  long  series  of  forms,  being  gradually  modi- 
fied into  men,  by  the  operation  of  the  laws  of  natural  and 
sexual  selection,  which  I  need  not  again  explain  to  you. 

SoPHEEEUS.  Very  well,  I  have  always  so  understood  the 
theory.  But  then  I  have  also  understood  it  to  be  a  part  of 
the  same  theory  that  there  is  important  auxiliary  proof  of 
the  supposed  process  of  evolution  to  be  derived  from  what 
is  known  to  take  place  in  the  interbreeding  of  different 
races  or  families  of  the  same  animal.  Whatever  value  there 
may  be  in  this  last  fact,  as  auxiliary  evidence  of  the  sup- 
posed process  of  evolution,  there  must  have  been  a  time,  in 
the  development  of  the  long  series  of  forms  proceeding  from 
the  ape-like  progenitor,  when  an  animal  had  been  produced 
which  could  propagate  nothing  but  its  own  type,  and  be- 
tween which  and  the  surrounding  other  animals  no  prop- 
agation could  take  place,  if  we  are  to  judge  by  what  all 
nature  teaches  us.  You  may  say  that  the  laws-of  natural 
and  sexual  selection  would  still  go  on  operating  among  the 
numerous  individuals  of  this  animal  which  had  become  in 
itself  a  completed  product,  and  that  to  their  descendants 
would  be  transmitted  newly  acquired  organs  and  powers, 
new  habits  of  life,  and  all  else  that  natural  and  sexual  selec- 
tion can  be  imagined  to  have  brought  about.  But  at  some 
time,  somewhere  in  the  series,  you  reach  an  animal  of  a 
distinct  character,  in  which  natural  and  sexual  selection 
have  done  all  that  they  can  do  ;  in  which  there  can  be  no 
propagation  of  offspring  but  those  of  a  distinct  and  pecul- 
iar type,  and  the  invincible  barrier  against  a  sexual  union 
with  any  other  type  becomes  established.  For  this  reason, 
we  must  recognize  the  limits  of  possible  interbreeding.  It 
is  best  for  us,  therefore,  to  come  to  some  understanding  of 
the  sense  in  which  we  shall  use  the  term  "species."  For 
I  shall  press  upon  you  this  consideration — that  animals  dif- 


PRIMEVAL  MAN.  375 

fer  absolutely  from  each  other ;  that  there  can  be  no  inter- 
breeding between  animals  which  so  differ ;  and  yet  that, 
without  interbreeding  between  animals  having  distinct  or- 
ganizations, natural  and  sexual  selection  had  not  the  force 
necessary  to  produce,  in  any  length  of  time,  such  a  being 
as  man  out  of  such  a  being  as  the  ape. 

KosMicos.  I  will  let  Darwin  answer  you,  in  a  passage 
which  I  will  read.  **  Whether  primeval  man,"  he  observes, 
"  when  he  possessed  but  few  arts,  and  those  of  the  rudest 
kind,  and  when  his  power  of  language  was  extremely  im- 
perfect, would  have  deserved  to  be  called  man,  must  depend 
on  the  definition  which  we  employ.  In  a  long  series  of 
forms  graduating  insensibly  from  some  ape-like  creature  to 
man  as  he  now  exists,  it  would  be  impossible  to  fix  on  any 
definite  time  when  the  term  '  man '  ought  to  be  used.  But 
this  is  a  matter  of  very  little  importance."  That  is  to  say, 
in  the  long  series  of  forms  descending  from  the  ape-like 
creature,  we  can  not  fix  on  any  one  of  the  modified  de- 
scendants which  we  can  pronounce  to  be  separated  from 
the  family  of  apes,  and  to  have  become  the  new  family, 
man,  because  to  do  this  requires  a  definition  of  man.  Man 
as  he  now  exists  we  know,  but  the  primeval  man  we  do 
not  know.  He  may  have  been  an  animal  capable  of  sexual 
union  with  some  of  his  kindred  who  stood  nearest  to  him, 
but  yet  remained  apes,  or  he  may  not.  It  is  not  important 
what  he  was,  or  whether  we  can  find  the  time  when  he 
ceased  to  belong  to  the  family  of  apes  and  became  the  pri- 
meval man.  The  hypothesis  of  his  descent  remains  good, 
notwithstanding  we  can  not  find  that  time,  because  it  is 
supported  by  a  great  multitude  of  facts. 

SoPHEREUS.  I  have  never  seen  any  facts  which  I  can 
regard  as  giving  direct  support  to  the  theory.  But,  waiv- 
ing this  want  of  evidence,  doubtless  it  is  not  important  to 
find  the  time,  chronologically,  when  the  modified  descend- 
ants, supposed  to  have  proceeded  from  the  ape-like  creature. 


37a  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

became  the  primeval  man ;  but  it  is  of  the  utmost  impor- 
tance to  have  some  satisfactory  grounds  for  believing  that 
there  ever  was  such  an  occurrence  as  the  development  of 
the  animal  man,  primeval  or  modern  man,  out  of  such  an 
animal  as  the  ape.  And  therefore,  without  reference  to 
the  sense  in  which  naturalists  use  the  term  "species,"  I 
shall  give  you  the  sense  in  which  I  use  it.  I  use  it  to  des- 
ignate the  animals  which  are  distinct  from  each  other,  as 
the  man,  the  horse,  the  ape,  and  the  dog  are  all  distinct 
from  each  other.  Speaking  of  man  as  one  true  species,  I 
include  all  the  races  of  men.  Speaking  of  the  apes  as  an- 
other species,  I  include  all  the  families  of  apes.  Speaking 
of  the  bovine,  the  equine,  or  the  canine  species,  I  include 
in  each  their  respective  varieties.  Now,  as  crosses  in  inter- 
breeding can  take  place  between  the  different  varieties  or 
families  of  these  several  species,  and  can  not  take  place 
between  the  species  themselves — between  those  which  I 
thus  class  as  species — ^the  limits  of  such  crosses  become  im- 
portant facts  in  considering  the  theory  of  evolution,  because 
they  narrow  the  inquiry  to  the  possibility  of  effecting  a 
propagation  of  one  species  out  of  another  species.  Take 
any  animal  which  has  become  a  completed  and  final  product 
— a  peculiar  and  distinct  creature — whether  made  so  by 
aboriginal  creation  or  produced  by  what  you  call  evolution. 
The  reproductive  faculty  of  the  males  and  the  females  of 
this  distinct  and  peculiar  animal  is  limited  to  the  genera- 
tive reproduction  of  individuals  of  the  same  type,  by  a 
sexual  union  of  two  individuals  of  that  type.  Their  proge- 
ny, in  successive  generations,  may  be  marked  by  adventi- 
tious and  slowly  acquired  peculiarities ;  but  unless  there 
can  be  found  some  instance  or  instances  in  which  the  pro- 
cess of  modification  has  resulted  in  an  animal  which  we 
must  regard  as  an  essentially  new  creature — a  new  species 
— what  becomes  of  the  auxiliary  evidence  which  is  supposed 
to  be  derived  from  the  effects  of  interbreeding  between 


THE  SEXUAL  DIVISIOK  377 

those  individuals  which  can  interbreed  ?  I  lose  all  hold 
upon  the  theory  of  evolution,  unless  I  can  have  some  proof 
that  natural  and  sexual  selection  have  overcome  the  bar- 
riers against  a  sexual  union  among  animals  which  are  di- 
vided into  males  and  females  of  the  several  species,  each  of 
which  is  placed  under  a  law  of  procreation  and  gestation 
peculiar  to  itself,  and  never  produces  any  type  but  its  own. 
KosMicos.  You  wander  from  the  principle  of  evolution. 
I  have  to  be  perpetually  restating  it.  Observe,  then,  that 
there  are  multitudes  of  facts  which  warrant  the  belief  that, 
starting  with  any  one  kind  of  animal  organism,  however 
peculiar  and  distinct,  the  struggle  for  existence  among  the 
enormous  number  of  individuals  of  that  animal  becomes 
most  intense,  and  a  furious  battle  is  constantly  going  on. 
The  best-appointed  males,  in  the  fierceness  of  the  strife  for 
possession  of  the  females,  develop  new  organs  and  powers, 
or  their  original  organs  and  powers  are  greatly  enhanced. 
Their  descendants  share  in  these  modifications;  and  the 
modifications  go  on  in  a  geometrical  ratio  of  increase 
through  millions  of  years,  until  at  some  time  there  is  devel- 
oped an  animal  which  differs  absolutely  from  its  remote 
progenitors  which  were  away  back  in  the  remote  past,  and 
which  began  the  struggle  for  individual  life  and  the  con- 
tinuation of  their  species  or  their  race  in  a  condition  of 
things  which  left  the  fittest  survivors  the  sole  or  nearly  the 
sole  propagators  of  new  individuals.  This  struggle  for  ex- 
istence may  have  begun — probably  it  did  begin — before  the 
separation  of  the  sexes,  when  the  organism  was  unisexual 
or  even  asexual.  That  is  to  say,  there  may  have  been, 
and  there  probably  was,  an  organism  which  multiplied  with 
enormous  rapidity,  without  the  bisexual  method  of  repro- 
duction. The  vast  multitude  of  such  individuals  would 
lead  to  the  destruction  of  the  weakest ;  the  strong  survivors 
would  continue  to  give  rise  to  other  individuals,  modified 
from  the  original  type,  until  at  length,  by  force  of  this  per- 


378  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

petual  exertion  and  struggle  and  the  suryival  of  the  fittest, 
modifications  of  the  method  of  reproduction  would  ensue, 
and  the  bisexual  division  would  be  developed  and  perpetu- 
ated. 

SoPHEREUS.  I  confess  I  did  not  expect  to  hear  you  go 
quite  so  far.  I  will  yield  all  the  potency  to  natural  and 
sexual  selection  that  can  be  fairly  claimed  for  them  as 
modifying  agencies  operating  after  the  sexual  division  has 
come  about ;  but  I  have,  I  repeat,  seen  no  facts  which  jus- 
tify the  hypothesis  that  they  have  led  to  distinct  organisms 
between  which  no  propagation  can  take  place.  But  now 
you  expect  me  to  accept  the  startling  conclusion  that  at 
some  time  the  asexual  or  the  unisexual  method  of  repro- 
duction passed  into  the  bisexual,  without  any  formative 
will  or  design  of  a  creating  power,  and  without  any  act  of 
direct  creation.  "We  know  what  Plato  imagined  as  the 
origin  of  the  sexual  division,  and  that  he  could  not  get 
along  without  the  intervention  of  the  gods.  What  modern 
naturalist  has  done  any  better  ?  I  have  examined  Darwin's 
works  pretty  diligently,  and  I  can  not  get  from  them  any 
solution  of  the  origin  of  the  bisexual  division.  I  am  left 
to  reason  upon  it  as  I  best  can.  We  know,  then,  that  in 
the  higher  animal  organisms  the  individuals  of  each  species 
are  divided  into  the  related  forms  of  male  and  female,  and 
that  for  each  species  there  exists  the  one  invariable  method 
of  the  sexual  union,  and  a  law  of  gestation  peculiar  to 
itself.  One  hypothesis  is  that  this  system  was  produced  by 
the  operation  of  natural  causes,  like  those  which  are  sup- 
posed to  have  differentiated  the  various  kinds  of  organisms; 
the  other  hjrpothesis  is  that  it  was  introduced  with  special 
design,  by  an  act  of  some  creative  will.  If  we  view  the 
phenomena  of  the  sexual  division  and  the  sexual  genesis  in 
the  highest  animal  in  which  they  obtain,  we  find  that  they 
lead  to  certain  social  results,  which  plainly  indicate  that  in 
this  animal  they  exist  for  a  great  and  comprehensive  moral 


THE  SEXUAL  PASSION-.  379 

purpose,  which  far  transcends  all  that  can  be  imagined  as 
the  moral  purpose  for  which  they  exist  in  the  other  ani- 
mals. To  a  comparatively  very  limited  extent,  certain  so- 
cial consequences  flow  from  the  law  of  sexual  division  and 
genesis  among  the  other  animals.  But  there  is  no  animal 
in  which  the  moral  and  social  effects  of  this  law  are  to  be 
compared  to  those  which  it  produces  in  the  human  race. 
Not  only  does  the  same  law  of  multiplication  obtain  among 
the  human  race ;  not  only  does  it  lead  to  love  of  the  off- 
spring far  more  durable  and  powerful  than  in  the  case  of 
any  other  animal ;  not  only  is  it  the  origin  of  a  society  far 
more  complex,  more  lasting,  and  more  varied  in  its  condi- 
tions than  any  that  can  be  discovered  in  the  associations  of 
other  animals  which  appear  to  have  some  social  habits  and 
to  form  themselves  into  communities,  but  in  the  human 
race  alone,  so  far  as  we  have  any  means  of  knowledge,  has 
the  passion  of  sexual  love  become  refined  into  a  sentiment. 
You  may  remember  the  passage  in  the  "Paradise  Lost"  in 
which  Kaphael,  in  his  conversation  with  Adam,  touches  so 
finely  the  distinction  between  sexual  love  in  the  human 
race  and  in  all  the  other  animals.  The  angel  reminds 
Adam  that  he  shares  with  the  brutes  the  physical  enjoy- 
ment which  leads  to  propagation  ;  and  then  tells  him  that 
there  was  implanted  in  his  nature  a  higher  and  different 
capacity  of  enjoyment  in  love.     The  conclusion  is  : — 

"...  for  this  cause 
Among  the  beasts  no  mate  for  thee  was  found." 

In  the  human  being  alone,  even  when  there  is  not  much 
else  to  distinguish  the  savage  from  the  beasts  around  him, 
the  passion  of  love  is  often  something  more  nearly  akin  to 
what  might  be  looked  for  in  an  elevated  nature,  than  it  can 
be  among  the  brutes.  "What  do  the  poetry  and  romance 
of  the  ruder  nations  show,  but  that  this  passion  of  sexual 
love  in  the  human  being  is  one  in  which  physical  appetite 


380  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

and  sentimental  feeling  are  so  '^well  commingled"  that 
their  union  marks  the  compound  nature  of  an  animal  and 
a  spiritual  being  ?  How  human  society  has  resulted  from 
this  passion,  how  in  the  great  aggregate  of  its  forces  it 
moves  the  world,  how  in  its  highest  development  it  gives 
rise  to  the  social  virtues,  and  in  its  baser  manifestations 
leads  to  vice,  misery,  and  degradation,  I  do  not  need  to 
remind  you.  How,  then,  is  it  possible  to  avoid  the  con- 
clusion that  in  man  the  sexual  passion  was  implanted  by 
special  design  and  for  a  special  purpose,  which  extends  far 
beyond  the  immediate  end  of  a  continuation  of  the  race  ? 

KosMicos.  Why  do  you  resort  to  a  special  purpose  in 
the  constitution  of  one  animal,  and  to  the  absence  of  a 
similar  purpose  from  the  constitution  of  another  animal  ? 
In  both,  the  consequences  make  a  case  of  the  post  hoc  just 
as  plainly  as  they  make  a  case  of  the  propter  hoc.  It  is  just 
as  rational  to  conclude  that  they  only  show  the  former  as 
it  is  to  conclude  that  they  establish  the  latter.  In  man, 
we  have  the  physical  fact  of  the  sexual  division,  and  all 
you  can  say  is  that  it  is  followed  by  certain  great  and  va- 
ried moral  phenomena.  In  the  other  animals,  we  have  the 
same  physical  fact,  followed  by  moral  phenomena  less  com- 
plex and  varied,  and  not  so  lasting.  In  neither  case  can 
you  say  that  there  was  a  special  and  separate  design,  ac- 
cording to  which  the  same  physical  fact  was  intended  to 
produce  the  special  consequences  which  we  observe  in  each. 
Why,  as  the  species  called  man  became  developed  into  be- 
ings of  a  higher  order  than  the  primate^  of  the  race  or  than 
their  remote  progenitors,  should  not  this  passion  of  sexual 
love  have  become  elevated  into  a  sentiment  and  been  fol- 
lowed by  the  effects  of  that  elevation,  just  as  the  gratifica- 
tion of  another  appetite,  that  for  food,  par  exempUy  has 
been  refined  by  the  intellectual  pleasures  of  the  social  ban- 
quet and  the  interchange  of  social  courtesies  ?  Is  there 
anything  to  be  proved  by  the  institution  or  the  practice  of 


PERMANENT  MARRIAGES.  381 

marriage,  beyond  this — that  it  has  been  found  by  experi- 
ence to  be  of  great  social  utility,  and  is  therefore  regulated 
by  human  laws  and  customs,  which  vary  in  the  different 
races  of  mankind  ?  Monogamy  is  the  rule  among  some 
nations,  polygamy  is  at  least  allowed  in  others.  You  can 
predicate  nothing  of  either  excepting  that  each  society 
deems  its  own  practice  to  be  upon  the  whole  the  most  ad- 
vantageous. You  can  not  say  that  there  is  any  fixed  law 
of  nature  which  renders  it  unnatural  for  one  man  to  have 
more  than  one  wife.  In  many  ages  of  the  world  there 
have  been  states  of  society  in  which  the  family  has  had  as 
good  a  foundation  in  polygamous  as  it  has  had  in  monog- 
amous unions.  Looking,  then,  at  these  undeniable  facts, 
and  also  at  the  fact  that  marriage,  whether  monogamous 
or  polygamous,  is  an  institution  regulated  by  human  law 
and  custom,  we  have  to  inquire  for  the  reason  why  human 
law  and  custom  take  any  cognizance  of  the  relation.  We 
find  that,  among  some  of  the  other  animals,  the  sexes  do 
not  pair  excepting  for  a  single  birth.  The  connection  lasts 
no  longer  than  for  a  certain  period  during  which  the  pro- 
tection of  both  parents  is  needed  by  the  offspring,  and  not 
always  so  long  even  as  that.  It  has  become  the  experience 
of  mankind  that  the  connection  of  the  parents  ought  to  be 
formed  for  more  than  one  birth ;  shall  be  of  indefinite 
duration  ;  and  this  because  of  the  physical  and  social  bene- 
fits which  flow  from  such  a  permanency  of  the  union. 
This  has  given  rise  to  certain  moral  feelings  concerning 
the  relation  of  husband  and  wife.  But  we  have  no  more 
warrant,  from  anything  that  we  can  discover  in  nature,  for 
regarding  the  permanency  of  marriage  among  the  human 
race  as  a  divine  institution  than  we  have  for  regarding  its 
temporary  continuance  among  the  other  animals  as  a  divine- 
ly appointed  temporary  arrangement.  In  the  one  case,  the 
permanency  of  the  union  has  resulted  from  experience  of 
its  utility.     In  the  other  case,  the  animal  perceives  no  such 


382  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

ntilitj,  and  therefore  does  not  follow  the  practice.  Upon 
the  hypothesis  that  all  the  animals,  man  included,  had  a 
common  origin,  it  is  very  easy  to  account  for  the  difference 
which  prevails  between  man  and  the  other  animals  in  this 
matter  of  marriage,  or  the  pairing  of  the  sexes.  As  man 
became  by  insensible  gradations  evolved  out  of  some  pre- 
existing organism,  and  as  moral  sentiments  became  evolved 
out  of  his  superior  and  more  complex  relations  with  his 
fellows,  from  his  experience  of  the  practical  utility  of  cer- 
tain kinds  of  conduct  and  practice,  the  sentiments  became 
insensibly  interwoven  with  his  feelings  about  the  most  im- 
portant of  his  social  relations,  the  union  of  the  sexes  in 
marriage.  This  is  quite  sufficient  to  account  for  the  differ- 
ence between  man  and  the  other  animals  in  regard  to  the 
duration  of  such  unions,  without  resorting  to  any  inten- 
tional or  divine  or  superhuman  origin  of  that  difference. 

SoPHEREUs.  For  the  purpose  of  the  argument,  I  con- 
cede that  this  is  a  case  of  either  the  post  hoc  or  the  propter 
hoc.  I  have  been  pretty  careful,  however,  in  all  my  inves- 
tigations, not  to  lose  sight  of  this  distinction  in  reasoning 
on  the  phenomena  of  nature  or  those  of  society.  I  think  I 
can  perceive  when  there  is  a  connection  between  cause  and 
effect,  when  that  connection  evinces  an  intelligent  design, 
and  when  the  phenomena  bear  no  relation  to  a  certain  fact 
beyond  that  of  sequence  in  time.  What,  then,  have  we  to 
begin  with  ?  We  have  the  fact  that  the  human  race  is  di- 
vided into  the  two  forms  of  male  and  female,  and  that  the 
passion  or  appetite  of  sexual  love  exists  in  both  sexes,  and 
that  its  gratification  is  the  immediate  cause  of  a  production 
of  other  individuals  of  the  same  species.  We  next  have  the 
fact  that  this  union  of  the  sexes  is  followed  by  an  extraor- 
dinary amount  of  moral  and  social  phenomena  that  are  pe- 
culiar to  the  human  race.  This  sequence  proves  to  me  an 
intentional  design  that  the  moral  and  social  phenomena 
shall  flow  from  the  occurrence  of  the  sexual  union,  for  it 


MORAL  PURPOSE.  383 

establishes  not  only  a  possibility,  but  an  immensely  strong 
probability,  that  the  phenomena  were  designed  to  flow  from 
this  one  occurrence  among  this  particular  species  of  animal. 
If  this  connection  between  the  original  physiological  fact 
and  the  moral  and  social  phenomena  be  established  to  our 
reasonable  satisfaction,  it  is  the  highest  kind  of  moral  evi- 
dence of  a  special  design  in  the  existence  of  the  sexual  di- 
vision and  the  sexual  passion  among  the  human  race.  You 
remember  old  Sir  Thomas  Browne's  suggestion,  that  men 
might  have  been  propagated  as  trees  are.  But  they  are  not 
so  propagated.  If  they  were,  no  such  consequences  would 
have  followed  as  those  which  do  follow  from  the  mode  in 
which  they  are  in  fact  propagated.  These  consequences 
are  most  numerous  and  complex,  and  they  are  capable  of 
being  assigned  to  nothing  but  the  sexual  division  and  the 
sexual  union  as  the  means  of  continuing  the  race.  Turn 
now  to  some  of  the  other  animals  among  whom  there  pre- 
vail the  same  bisexual  division  and  the  same  method  of  pro- 
creation and  multiplication.  You  find  they  result  in  sex- 
ual unions  of  very  short  duration,  and  that,  if  it  is  followed 
by  phenomena  that  in  some  feeble  degree  resemble  those 
which  are  found  in  human  society,  they  bear  no  comparison 
in  point  of  complexity  and  character  to  those  which  in  the 
human  race  mark  the  family,  the  tribe,  and  the  nation. 
And  here  there  occurs  something  which  is  closely  analogous 
to  what  I  pointed  out  to  you  in  considering  the  supposed 
development  of  the  first  animal  organism.  I  said  that  al- 
though you  may  theoretically  suppose  that  the  first  animal 
organism  was  formed  by  the  spontaneous  union  of  molecu- 
lar aggregates,  and  that  the  higher  organisms  were  evolved 
out  of  the  lower  solely  by  the  operation  of  causes  which 
you  call  *' natural,"  yet  that  when  you  come  to  account  for 
the  existence  of  true  and  distinct  species,  each  with  its  sex- 
ual division  and  its  law  of  procreation  and  gestation,  you 
must  infer  a  special  design  and  a  formative  will,  because 


384  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

there  has  neyer  been  suggested  any  method  by  which  the 
so-called  natural  causes  could  have  produced  this  division 
of  the  sexes  and  this  invariable  law  of  the  sexual  procrea- 
tion among  individuals  of  the  same  species.  Here,  then, 
we  arrive  at  a  distinct  moral  purpose  ;  for,  when  we  com- 
pare the  dijfferent  social  phenomena  which  follow  the  opera- 
tion of  the  sexual  division  and  procreation  in  man  with  the 
social  phenomena  which  follow  in  the  case  of  the  other 
animals,  we  find  a  difference  that  is  not  simply  one  of  de- 
gree, but  is  one  of  kind.  We  find  the  origin  of  the  family, 
the  tribe,  and  the  nation  :  the  source  of  the  complex  phe- 
nomena of  human  society.  We  may  therefore  rationally 
conclude  that  in  man  the  sexual  division  and  the  sexual 
passion  were  designed  to  have  effects  that  they  were  not 
designed  to  have  in  the  other  animals.  To  suppose  that 
these  vastly  superior  consequences  in  the  case  of  man  are 
the  mere  results  of  his  perception  of  their  utility  will  not 
account  for  the  fact  that  when  he  does  not  recognize  the 
utility — when  he  departs  from  the  law  of  his  human  exist- 
ence— human  society  can  not  be  formed  and  continued. 
Although  it  is  possible  for  human  society  to  exist  with  po- 
lygamous marriages,  and  even  to  have  some  strength  and 
duration,  yet  human  society  without  the  family,  with  pro- 
miscuous sexual  intercourse,  with  no  marriages  and  no  ties 
between  parents  and  children,  never  has  existed  or  can 
exist.  Compare  Plato's  curious  constitution  of  the  body  of 
"guardians,"  in  his  **Kepublic,"  and  the  strange  method 
of  unions,  the  offspring  of  which  were  not  allowed  to  know 
their  parents  or  the  parents  to  know  their  own  children. 
This  was  not  imagined  as  a  form  of  human  society,  but  was 
entirely  like  a  breeding-stud.  Among  the  brutes,  perma- 
nent marriages,  families,  do  not  exist,  not  because  the  ani- 
mals do  not  perceive  their  social  utility,  but  because  the 
purposes  of  their  lives,  their  manifest  destinies,  show  that 
there  was  no  reason  for  endowing  them  with  any  higher 


MORAL  PURPOSE.  385 

capacity  for  the  sexual  enjoyment  than  that  which  leads  to 
the  very  limited  consequences  for  which  the  division  of  the 
sexes  was  in  their  cases  ordained.  But  in  the  case  of  man 
there  is  a  further  and  higher  capacity  for  the  sexual  enjoy- 
ment, which  becomes  the  root  of  his  social  happiness,  and 
which  distinguishes  him  from  the  brute  creation  quite  as 
palpably  as  the  superiority  of  his  intellectual  faculties.  In 
all  this  we  must  recognize  a  moral  purpose. 

KosMicos.  Pray  tell  me  why  it  is  not  just  as  rational  to 
conclude  that  these  moral  phenomena,  as  results  of  the  hu- 
man passion  of  love,  have  become,  in  all  their  complex  and 
diversified  aspects,  the  consequences  of  a  progressive  eleva- 
tion of  the  human  animal  to  a  higher  plane  of  existence 
than  that  occupied  by  the  inferior  species,  or  than  that 
occupied  by  the  primeval  man.  When  man  had  become 
developed  into  an  animal  in  whom  the  intellect  could  be- 
come what  it  is,  he  could  begin  to  perceive  the  social  util- 
ity of  certain  modes  of  life,  and  from  this  idea  of  their 
utility  would  result  certain  maxims  of  conduct  which  would 
be  acted  on  as  moral  obligations.  Thus,  commencing  with 
a  consciousness  that  the  race  exists  with  the  sexual  division 
into  male  and  female,  there  would  begin  to  be  formed  some 
ideas  of  the  superior  social  utility  of  a  regulated  sexual 
union  of  individuals  and  of  permanent  marriages.  These 
ideas  would  become  refined  as  the  progressive  elevation  of 
the  race  went  on,  and  that  which  we  recognize  as  the  sen- 
timental element  in  the  passion  of  love  would  become  de- 
veloped out  of  the  perceptions  of  a  superior  utility  in  the 
permanent  devotion  and  consecration  of  two  individuals  to 
each  other.  If,  then,  by  a  moral  purpose  in  the  establish- 
ment of  the  bisexual  division  you  mean  that  all  these  social 
phenomena  of  the  family,  the  tribe,  and  the  nation  were 
designed  in  the  human  race  to  follow  from  that  division,  I 
see  no  necessity  for  resorting  to  any  such  moral  purpose  on 
the  part  of  a  creator,  because  they  might  just  as  well  have 


386  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

followed  from  the  progressive  elevation  and  development  of 
the  human  animal,  supposing  him  to  be  descended  from 
some  pre-existing  type  of  animal  of  another  and  inferior 
organization.  The  philosophy  which  you  seem  to  be  culti- 
vating closely  resembles  that  which  ascribes  everything  to 
the  action  of  mind  as  its  cause.  This,  you  must  be  aware, 
it  is  the  tendency  of  modern  science  to  antagonize  by  a  dif- 
ferent view  of  causation.  "What  have  you  been  reading, 
that  you  adhere  so  pertinaciously  to  the  idea  of  a  moral 
purpose  adopted  by  some  being,  overlooking  those  physical 
causes  which  may  have  produced  all  the  results  without 
that  hypothesis  ? 

SoPHEREUS.  I  have  been  reading  a  good  deal,  but  I 
have  reflected  more.  I  may  not  be  able  to  reconcile  the 
metaphysical  speculations  of  the  different  schools  of  phi- 
losophy by  explanations  that  will  satisfy  others,  but  I  can 
satisfy  myself  on  one  point.  This  is,  that  power,  force, 
energy,  causation,  are  all  attributes  of  mind,  and  can  exist 
in  a  mind  only.  Let  us  pass  for  a  moment  from  abstract 
reasoning  to  an  illustration  drawn  from  familiar  objects. 
A  ton  of  coal  contains  a  certain  amount  of  what  is  scien- 
tifically called  energy.  This  energy  becomes  developed  by 
combustion,  which  liberates  heat.  The  heat,  when  applied 
to  water,  converts  the  water  into  a  vapor  called  steam — 
a  highly  elastic  substance.  The  expansion  of  the  steam 
against  a  mechanical  instrument  called  a  piston  produces 
motion,  and  an  engine  is  driven.  The  force  thus  obtained 
represents  the  energy  that  was  latent  in  the  coal.  If  we 
inquire  whence  the  coal  obtained  this  latent  energy,  there 
is  a  hypothesis  which  assigns  its  origin  to  the  sun,  which 
laid  up  a  certain  quantity  of  it  in  the  vegetable  substances 
that  became  converted  into  coal  in  one  of  the  geological 
periods  of  the  earth's  formation.  But  in  order  to  find 
the  ultimate  and  original  cause — the  causa  causans  of 
the  whole  process — we  must  go  behind  the  steam  and  its 


OAUSATIOK       •  387 

expansive  quality,  behind  the  heat  which  conyerts  the 
water  into  steam,  behind  the  coal  and  its  combustible  qual- 
ity, and  behind  the  sun  and  its  indwelling  heat,  a  portion 
of  which  was  imparted  to  and  left  latent  in  the  vegetable 
substances  that  became  coal.  We  must  inquire  whence 
they  all  originated.  If  they  did  not  create  themselves — an 
inconceivable  and  inadmissible  hypothesis — they  must  have 
originated  in  some  creating  power,  which  commanded  them 
to  exist  and  established  their  connections.  Without  a  men- 
tal energy  and  its  exertions,  matter  and  all  its  properties, 
substance  and  all  its  qualities,  the  sun's  indwelling  heat 
and  its  capacity  to  be  stored  up  in  vegetable  fiber  in  a  latent 
condition,  could  not  have  existed,  and  the  forces  of  nature 
of  which  we  avail  ourselves  would  never  have  emerged  from 
the  non-existent  state  that  we  conceive  of  as  "chaos."  I 
know  very  well  that  we  are  accustomed  to  associate  with  in- 
animate matter  the  ideas  of  power,  force,  energy,  and  causa- 
tion. But  if  we  rest  in  the  conception  of  these  as  acting  of 
themselves,  and  without  being  under  the  control  of  an  origi- 
nating mind  or  a  determining  will,  we  may  think  that  we 
have  arrived  at  ultimate  causes,  but  we  have  not.  We  have 
arrived  at  subsidiary  causes — the  instruments,  so  to  speak, 
in  the  control  of  an  intellect  which  has  ordained  and  uses 
them.  Whether  we  look  at  the  physical  causes  by  which 
the  early  Greek  philosophers  endeavored  to  explain  the 
phenomena  of  the  universe,  or  at  one  of  Plato's  conceptions 
of  a  designing  and  volitional  agency  in  the  formation  of  the 
Kosmos,  or  to  another  of  his  conceptions,  the  sovereignty 
of  universal  ideas  or  metaphysical  abstractions,  we  are 
everywhere  confronted  with  the  necessity  for  assigning  an 
origin  to  the  physical  causes,  or  to  the  universal  ideas  ;  and 
the  result  is  that  the  idea  of  a  supreme,  designing,  and  voli- 
tional agency  is  forced  upon  us — it  is  upon  me — by  an  irre- 
sistible process  of  reasoning,  an  invincible  necessity  of  my 
mental  constitution.  I  can  not  agree  with  Auguste  Comte, 
18 


388  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

who  regards  it  as  the  natural  progress  of  the  human  mind 
to  explain  phenomena  at  first  by  reference  to  some  personal 
agency,  and  to  pass  from  this  mode  of  explanation  to  that 
by  metaphysical  abstractions.  Nor  can  I  agree  with  you 
scientists,  who  not  only  rest  satisfied  yourselves  with  the  ex- 
planation of  the  ultimate  cause  of  phenomena  by  mere  phys- 
ical agencies,  but  who  insist  that  others  shall  not  deduce  a 
personal  and  yolitional  agency  from  the  existence  of  those 
physical  agencies.  To  me  it  seems  indispensable,  in  the 
study  of  phenomena,  to  recognize  moral  purposes  for  which 
they  have  been  made  to  be  what  they  are  :  and  of  course  a 
moral  purpose  is  hot  assignable  to  the  physical  agencies  of 
matter,  or  to  metaphysical  abstractions.  Hence  it  is  that 
in  reasoning  on  the  phenomena  of  human  society,  I  am 
obliged  to  recognize  a  moral  purpose  in  the  sexual  division, 
of  far  greater  scope  and  far  more  varied  consequences  than 
can  be  found  in  the  case  of  the  same  division  among  the 
other  animals. 

KosMicos.  I  put  to  you  this  question  :  What  do  you 
mean  by  a  moral  purpose  ?  In  teleology,  or  the  science  of 
the  final  causes  of  things,  you  must  find  out  the  producing 
agencies.  Let  me  give  you  a  theory  of  causation,  which 
will  show  you  that  your  notion  of  a  moral  purpose  is  alto- 
gether out  of  place.  The  only  true  causes  are  phenomenal 
ones,  or  what  is  certified  by  experience.  There  are  uniform 
and  unconditional  antecedents,  and  uniform  and  uncondi- 
tional sequences.  Something  goes  before,  uniformly  and  in- 
variably ;  something  uniformly  and  invariably  follows.  The 
first  are  causes ;  the  last  are  effects.  "We  can  not  go  farther 
back  than  the  antecedent  cause  ;  we  can  not  go  farther  for- 
ward than  the  "feffect.  We  can  not  connect  the  effect  with 
anything  but  the  antecedent  cause.  When,  therefore,  you 
speak  of  a  moral  purpose,  what  do  you  mean  ?  Where  do 
you  get  the  evidence  of  the  moral  purpose  ?  What  is  the 
purpose,  and  what  is  the  evidence  of  it  ? 


NECESSARY  REASOOTNG.  389 

SOPHEREUS.  I  answer  you  as  I  have  before — that  the 
agencies  which  you  call  phenomenal  causes  could  not  have 
established  themselves  ;  could  not  have  originated  their  own 
uniformity  ;  could  not  have  made  the  invariable  connection 
between  themselves  and  the  effects.  If  we  discard  the  idea 
of  a  moral  and  sentient  being,  a  mind  originating  and  or- 
daining the  physical  agencies,  we  have  nothing  left  but 
those  agencies  ;  and  in  this  the  human  mind  can  not  rest. 
It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  it  ought  to  rest  there.  It  does 
not,  will  not,  and  can  not.  Science — what  you  call  science 
— may  rest  there,  but  philosophy  can  not.  It  is  unphilo- 
sophical  to  speak  of  the  Unknown  Cause,  or  the  Unknown 
Power,  underlying  all  manifestations,  as  something  of  which 
we  can  not  conceive  and  must  not  personify.  The  ultimate 
power  which  underlies  all  phenomena  necessarily  implies  a 
will,  an  intellectual  origin,  and  a  mental  energy.  That  it 
is  something  whose  mental  operations  we  can  not  trace,  is 
no  argument  against  its  personality,  and  no  reason  why  we 
should  not  conceive  of  it  as  a  mental  energy. 

KosMicos.  You  have  more  than  once  referred  to  the 
constitution  of  the  human  mind  as  if  it  had  been  constructed 
with  an  irresistible  necessity  to  attribute  everything  to  the 
action  of  a  being,  an  intelligence,  and  a  will.  You  should 
rather  say  that  some  minds  have  trained  themselves  to  this 
mode  of  reasoning,  because  they  have  first  received  the  idea 
of  such  a  being  as  the  final  cause,  as  a  matter  of  dogmatic 
teaching,  and  they  have  tried  to  reason  it  out  so  as  to  attain 
a  conviction  that  what  they  have  been  taught  is  true.  It 
is  in  this  way  that  they  have  found  what  they  consider  as 
evidence  of  a  moral  purpose.  But  you  have  no  warrant  for 
the  assumption  that  the  human  intellect  has  been  put  to- 
gether in  such  a  way  that  it  can  not  avoid  reaching  the 
conclusion  that  all  phenomena  are  to  be  imputed  to  the  vo- 
lition of  a  mind  as  their  producing  cause. 

SoPHEKEUS.  In  speaking  of  the  human  mind  and  its 


390  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

incapacity  to  rest  satisfied  with  what  science  can  discoyer 
of  immediate  physical  agencies  in  the  production  of  phe- 
nomena, I  have  not  oyerlooked  the  fact  that  the  idea  of  a 
Creator  has  been  dogmatically  inculcated  as  a  matter  of 
belief.  But  I  form  my  conception  of  the  construction  of 
the  human  mind  from  the  operations  of  my  own  mind.  I 
have  not  trained  myself  into  any  mode  of  reasoning.  I 
have  somehow  been  so  placed  in  this  world  that,  as  I  have 
frequently  told  you  and  as  I  am  perfectly  conscious,  I  am 
uninfluenced  by  any  early  teaching,  and  can  judge  for  my- 
self of  the  force  of  evidence.  When  I  say,  therefore,  that 
the  human  intellect  is  so  constituted  that  it  is  obliged  to 
regard  mind  as  the  source  of  power,  I  exclude  all  teaching 
but  the  teaching  of  experience.  There  can  not  be  two 
courses  of  reasoning  that  are  alike  correct.  If  you  uncover 
a  portion  of  the  earth's  surface,  and  find  there  structures, 
implements,  and  various  objects  which  you  are  convinced 
that  the  forces  of  nature  did  not  produce,  you  must  con- 
clude that  they  were  the  productions  of  mind  availing  itself 
of  tlie  capabilities  of  matter  to  be  molded  and  arranged  by 
the  force  of  an  intelligent  will.  You  do  not  see  that  mind, 
you  do  not  see  the  work  in  progress,  but  you  are  irresistibly 
led  to  the  conclusion  that  there  was  a  mind  which  produced 
what  you  have  found.  You  can  not  reason  on  the  phenom- 
ena at  all,  without  having  the  conviction  forced  upon  you 
that  the  ultimate  cause  was  an  intelligent  being.  You  can 
not  explain  the  phenomena  without  this  conclusion.  How, 
then,  can  you  explain  the  more  various  and  extraordinary 
phenomena  of  nature  without  attributing  their  production 
to  mind  ?  You  have  no  more  direct  evidence  that  the  Pyr- 
amids of  Egypt,  or  an  obelisk  which  has  lain  buried  in 
the  earth  for  thousands  of  years,  were  made  by  human 
hands,  than  you  have  for  belie\^ng  that  an  animal  organism, 
or  the  solar  system,  was  planned  and  executed  by  an  intel- 
ligent being.     In  both  cases,  you  have  only  indirect  evi- 


AIMS  OF  SCIENCE.  391 

dence  ;  but  in  botli  cases  that  evidence  addresses  itself  to 
your  intellect  upon  the  same  principles  of  belief.  In  the 
case  of  the  pyramid  or  the  obelisk,  you  refer  the  construc- 
tion to  mind,  because  you  see  that  mind  alone  could  have 
been  the  real  cause  of  its  existence.  In  the  case  of  the 
animal  organism,  or  the  mechanism  of  the  heavenly  bodies, 
you  are  obliged  to  reason  in  the  same  way.  Hence  I  say 
that  our  minds  are  so  constituted  that  there  is  but  one 
method  of  correct  reasoning,  whether  the  phenomena  are 
those  which  can  be  attributed  only  to  human  intellect,  or 
are  those  which  must  be  attributed  to  superhuman  power 
and  intelligence.  Hence,  too,  I  speak  of  a  moral  purpose 
as  indicated  by  the  phenomena.  The  pyramid  and  the  obe- 
lisk were  built  with  a  moral  purpose.  The  animal  organ- 
ism and  all  that  follows  from  it,  the  structure  of  the  solar 
system  and  all  that  follows  from  it,  were  made  to  be  what 
they  are  with  a  moral  purpose.  When  you  ask  me  for  the 
evidence  of  this  purpose,  I  point  to  the  fact  that  the  phe- 
nomenal causes,  as  you  denominate  the  mere  physical  agen- 
cies employed  in  the  production  of  certain  objects,  were 
incapable  of  any  volitional  action,  and  that  without  volition 
the  connection  between  the  physical  agencies  and  their 
effects  could  not  have  been  established.  The  stone  and  the 
chisel  were  the  immediate  physical  agencies  which  produced 
the  obelisk.  But  who  selected  the  stone  and  wielded  the 
chisel  ?  And  who  designed  the  moral  uses  of  the  obelisk  ? 
Procreation,  by  the  sexual  union,  is  the  immediate  physical 
cause  of  the  existence  of  an  individual  animal.  But  who 
designed  its  structure,  appointed  for  it  a  law  of  its  being, 
and  established  the  physical  agencies  which  brought  the 
individual  into  existence  and  the  moral  consequences  that 
those  agencies  produce  ? 

KosMicos.  We  are  no  nearer  to  an  agreement  than  we 
have  been  in  our  former  discussions.  And  the  reason  is 
that  you  do  not  perceive  the  mission  and  the  method  of 


392  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

science.  ScieDce  undertakes  to  discover  those  causes  of 
phenomena  which  can  be  verified  by  experience  ;  so  that  we 
can  truly  say  that  our  knowledge  has  been  advanced,  and 
that  we  really  do  know  something  of  the  things  which  we 
talk  about.  This  is  the  domain  of  science.  Its  conclusions 
do  not  extend  into  the  region  of  that  which  is  unknown 
and  unknowable.  Inasmuch  as  its  conclusions  are  strictly 
positive,  because  they  are  demonstrated  by  experience,  they 
negative,  as  matter  of  knowledge,  anything  beyond.  You 
may  speculate  about  what  lies  beyond,  but  you  have  no 
reason  for  saying  that  you  know  anything  about  it ;  where- 
as men  who  reason  as  you  do,  and  yet  who  do  not  accept 
dogmas  simply  as  matters  of  faith,  are  constantly  trying  to 
persuade  themselves  that  they  know  something  about  that 
of  which  they  have  no  means  of  knowledge.  If  you  accept 
that  something  as  a  matter  of  faith,  because  you  are  satisfied 
with  the  evidence  which  establishes,  or  is  supposed  to  es- 
tablish, a  divine  revelation,  you  have  a  ground  for  belief 
with  which  science  does  not  undertake  to  interfere.  But 
you  have  no  ground  for  maintaining  that,  from  the  phenom- 
ena of  nature  alone,  you  can  derive  any  knowledge  beyond 
that  which  you  can  demonstrate  as  a  scientific  fact. 

SoPHEKEUS.  I  accept  your  definition  of  the  aims  and 
methods  of  science.  But  what  I  find  fault  with  is  the  as- 
sumption that  we  are  not  entitled  to  say  that  we  know  or 
believe  a  thing  which  can  not  be  demonstrated  as  a  scientific 
fact,  when  we  are  all  the  time  grounding  such  knowledge 
or  belief  upon  reasoning  that  convinces  us  of  the  truth  and 
reality  of  other  things  which  in  like  manner  are  not  de- 
monstrable as  scientific  facts.  You  may  say  that  this  is  not 
the  knowledge  which  we  derive  from  scientific  facts,  and 
therefore  it  is  not  to  be  dignified  by  the  name  of  knowledge. 
But  we  are  always  acting  and  must  act  upon  proofs  which 
are  not  scientific  demonstrations  ;  and  whether  we  call  this 
knowledge,  or  call  it  belief,  we  govern  our  lives  according 


AIMS  OF  SCIENCE.  393 

to  it.  We  accept  the  proof  that  a  buried  city  was  the  habi- 
tation and  work  of  intelligent  human  beings,  because  we 
know  that  the  forces  of  nature,  not  guided  and  applied  by 
intelligent  wills,  never  constructed  a  city.  We  accept  the 
proof  that  men  are  just,  merciful,  courageous,  truthful,  or 
the  reverse  of  all  this,  because  their  actions  prove  it,  al- 
though we  can  not  look  into  their  hearts.  What  does  all 
the  estimate  of  the  characters  of  men  rest  upon,  but  upon 
their  actions  ?  And  is  not  this  entitled  to  be  ranked  as 
knowledge  of  the  characters  of  individual  men  ? 

KosMicos.  We  must  each  retain  his  conclusions.  Let 
our  next  discussion  relate  to  the  origin  of  the  human  mind, 
and  then  we  shall  see  whether  you  will  be  able  to  resist  the 
origin  which  evolution  assigns  to  it. 

SoPHEREUS.  I  shall  be  glad  to  meet  you  again. 


CHAPTER  XL 

Origin  of  the  human  mind — Mr.  Spencer's  theory  of  the  composition  of 
mind — His  system  of  morality. 

According  to  their  appointment,  our  two  disputants 
have  met  to  discuss  the  origin  of  mind. 

SoPHEREUS.  Will  you  begin  this  conference  by  stating 
the  evolution  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  human  mind  ? 

KosMicos.  Most  willingly.  I  have  thus  far  spoken  of 
the  hypothesis  of  evolution  as  affording  an  explanation  of 
the  origin  of  distinct  animals,  regarded  simply  as  living  or- 
ganisms, differentiated  from  each  other  by  the  slow  process 
of  development  from  a  common  stock,  by  the  operation  of 
certain  physical  causes.  I  am  now  to  account  to  you  for 
the  origin  of  the  human  mind,  upon  the  same  hypothesis, 
namely,  that  man  is  a  development  from  some  previous 
and  lower  organism.  I  acknowledge  that  what  we  call 
mind,  or  intellect,  has  to  be  accounted  for ;  and  that  we 
who  hold  the  evolution  theory  of  the  origin  of  man  as  an 
animal  must  be  able  to  suggest  how  his  intellect  became 
developed  by  the  operation  of  the  same  natural  causes  which 
produced  his  physical  organization.  It  is  not  material,  in 
this  inquiry,  whether  we  agree  with  Darwin  in  assuming 
some  one  distinct  living  organism  of  a  very  low  type,  as  the 
original  stock  from  which  all  the  other  animal  organisms 
have  been  derived,  or  whether  we  go  with  Spencer  back  to 
the  primal  molecules  of  organizablo  matter,  and  suppose 
that  from  a  single  cell  have  been  developed  all  the  organisms 


NERVOUS  ORGANIZATION  395 

possessing  life,  in  a  regular  order  of  succession.  Upon 
either  supposition,  the  doctrine  of  evolution  explains  the 
origin  of  the  human  mind.  For,  upon  either  supposition, 
there  was  a  point  in  the  long  series  of  new  forms,  each  de- 
scending from  a  pre-existing  form,  at  which  the  manifesta- 
tions of  what  we  call  mind  may  be  said  to  haye  begun. 
This  link  in  the  connected  chain  of  organisms  occurred 
where  nervous  organization  began  to  act  with  some  spon- 
taneous movement,  with  some  power  of  voluntary  exertion, 
as  distinguished  from  the  involuntary  exertions  of  a  sub- 
stance that  acted  only  in  a  certain  and  fixed  way,  although 
that  substance  was  endowed  with  life.  The  substance  of 
nervous  organization  is  alike  in  all  animals.  In  some  it 
acts  in  a  limited  manner,  and  without  volitional  control ; 
in  others,  it  acts  in  more  varied  modes,  and  it  manifests 
some  power  of  volitional  control  and  volitional  rest,  as  well 
as  of  involuntary  movement.  But  in  all  animals  the  sub- 
stance of  which  nervous  organization  is  composed — the 
substance  which  acts  in  producing  movement,  whether  vol- 
untary or  involuntary — is  the  same  kind  of  physical  struct- 
ure. In  the  higher  animals,  the  great  nerve-center  is  the 
organ  called  the  brain.  To  this  organ  proceed  the  im- 
pressions produced  upon  one  set  of  nerves  by  external  ob- 
jects, or  by  light  or  heat.  From  the  same  organ  proceed, 
by  another  set  of  nerves,  those  movements  which  the  ani- 
mal is  endowed  with  the  power  of  making  from  within. 
Contemplating,  then,  the  whole  animal  kingdom  as  one 
great  connected  family,  but  divided  into  different  species, 
all  of  which  have  a  nervous  organization,  we  find  that  each 
species  is  endowed  with  the  power  of  generating  other  indi- 
viduals of  the  same  species  and  of  the  same  nervous  organ- 
ization. In  the  long  course  of  development  of  the  several 
species,  or  forms  of  animal  life,  there  comes  about  a  nervous 
organization  which  acts  freely  within  certain  limits,  but  in 
a  fixed  ancT  invariable  mode,  so  that  the  movements  are 


396  CKEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

uniformly  the  same,  and  not  in  any  proper  sense  volitional. 
To  such  an  animal  we  should  not  attribute  any  mind,  for 
mind  implies  some  power  of  comparison  and  variation, 
some  ability  to  act  in  more  than  a  prescribed  way.  This 
animal,  which  I  have  just  supposed  to  possess  a  very  limited 
power  of  nervous  action,  transmits  that  power  to  its  de- 
scendants ;  and  in  some  of  the  successive  generations  the 
power  remains  always  at  the  same  fixed  point.  But  the 
laws  of  natural  and  sexual  selection  are  perpetually  operat- 
ing among  those  descendants.  In  progress  of  time  there 
comes  to  be  developed  another  organism,  which  has  a  wider 
range  of  nervous  action ;  and,  as  this  ceaseless  process  of 
modification  and  improvement  goes  on,  there  is  developed 
stiU  another  nervous  organization  which  acts  with  still  more 
varied  movements.  As  the  different  species  of  animals  be- 
come evolved  out  of  those  that  have  gone  before,  the  ex- 
pansion of  nervous  organization  goes  on  ;  and  as  each  new 
and  higher  and  more  complex  stage  is  gained,  individuals 
of  the  species  have  the  power  to  transmit  it  to  their  descend- 
ants by  ordinary  generation.  At  length,  as  in  some  of  the 
mammalia,  a  nervous  organization  is  attained,  whose  action 
exhibits  manifestations  of  what  we  call  mind.  There  ap- 
pears to  be  a  power  of  something  like  reasoning  and  voli- 
tion, because  the  nervous  actions  are  so  various  and  so  much 
adapted  to  outward  circumstances.  Thus,  before  we  reach 
the  human  animal,  we  find  nervous  organizations  widely 
separated  from  those  of  the  remote  progenitor  species,  be- 
cause they  can  do  so  much  more,  and  can  do  it  with  an 
apparent  power  of  voluntary  variation.  At  last,  this  pro- 
cess of  modifications  accumulating  upon  modifications  cul- 
minates in  an  animal  in  whose  nervous  organization  we  find 
the  freest,  the  most  complex,  and  the  most  various  power 
of  receiving  into  his  brain  the  impressions  derived  from  the 
external  world,  and  of  transmitting  from  his  brain  to  the 
different  organs  of  his  body  those  movements  which  the  ex- 


OKIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  397 

ternal  circumstances  of  his  life,  or  his  internal  efforts,  cause 
him  to  strive  for  and  to  effect.  This  animal  was  the  pri- 
meval man.* 

Looking  back,  then,  to  the  primal  source  of  all  nervous 
organization,  in  the  remote  animal  in  which  the  nervous 
structure  and  action  were  at  the  crudest  state  of  develop- 
ment, and  remembering  that  there  was  a  power  of  trans- 
mitting it  to  offspring,  and  that  natural  and  sexual  selection 
were  unceasingly  operating  to  expand  and  perfect  it,  we  may- 
trace  the  successive  stages  of  its  modification  and  growth, 
from  the  lowest  to  the  highest,  until  we  reach  in  the  prime- 
val man  the  highest  development  that  it  had  yet  attained. 
But  throughout  all  its  stages,  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest, 
the  system  of  nervous  organization  and  action  is  the  same 
in  kind.  We  do  not  call  its  manifestations  or  action  mind, 
or  speak  of  them  as  indicating  mind,  until  we  find  it  de- 
veloped into  a  condition  of  some  voluntary  activity  and 
power  of  variation,  as  it  is  in  many  of  the  animals  inferior 
to  man.  But  in  all  the  animals,  man  included,  mind  is  the 
action  of  the  nervous  organization  when  it  evinces  a  superior 
power  of  variation  ;  and  we  speak  of  the  brain  of  such  ani- 
mals as  the  seat  of  mind  because  that  organ'  is  the  source  to 
and  from  which  nervous  action  proceeds. 

Let  me  now  illustrate  this  view  by  the  acquisition  of 
articulate  speech  and  the  formation  of  language.  In  many 
of  the  lower  animals  with  which  we  are  acquainted  there  is 
a  power  of  uttering  vocal  sounds,  and  of  understanding 
them  when  uttered  by  their  fellows.  It  must  have  been  a 
power  possessed  by  those  animals  which  were  the  progeni- 

*  Probably  Kosmicos  did  not  mean  that  man  excels  all  other  animals 
in  the  delicacy  and  perfection  of  his  nervous  organization,  for  some  of  his 
senses  are  inferior  to  those  of  some  of  the  other  animals,  as  his  movements 
are  less  swift.  Apparently  his  meaning  is  that,  taken  as  a  whole,  the  nerv- 
ous organization  of  man  evinces  the  greatest  power  of  variation  and  the 
widest  ranse  of  action. 


398  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

tors  of  man  in  tlie  long  line  of  descent  of  one  species  from 
another.  But  in  them  it  was  a  yery  limited  power.  It  in- 
creased as  the  nervous  organization  and  the  vocal  organs 
became  in  the  successive  species  capable  of  a  more  varied 
action.  The  sounds  of  the  external  world  impressed  them- 
selves uj)on  the  brains  of  the  primeval  men  more  forcibly 
than  they  did  upon  the  brains  of  the  other  animals,  and  ex- 
cited the  nervous  organization  to  reproduce  or  imitate  them. 
Those  emotions  and  desires  which  originated  in  the  brain 
itself — the  impressions  of  pain  or  the  sensations  of  pleas- 
ure experienced  in  the  nervous  system — sought  expression 
through  the  vocal  organs.  Certain  sounds  repeated  alike 
by  the  same  individual,  or  by  numerous  individuals,  for  a 
long  time,  became  associated  in  their  brains  with  certain 
feelings  or  sensations.  What  are  called  words  were  thus 
formed ;  which,  at  first,  could  have  been  nothing  but  the 
utterance  of  certain  sounds  by  the  vocal  organs,  expressing 
the  sensations  felt  by  the  nervous  organization,  or  the  imi- 
tations of  external  noises.  At  length  these  vocal  sounds  are 
gathered  in  the  memory,  multiplied  and  systematized,  and 
a  rude  language  is  formed.  But,  all  the  while,  the  first 
crude  human  language  was  nothing  but  the  result  of  nerv- 
ous action  excited  to  greater  activity  than  in  the  other 
animals,  accompanied  by  nicer  and  more  capable  vocal  or- 
gans and  a  greater  power  of  using  them.  This  acquisition, 
obtained  by  the  primeval  men,  was  transmitted  to  their  de- 
scendants as  an  improved  physical  organization,  and  in 
those  descendants  it  finally  reached  the  marvelous  develop- 
ment of  the  most  perfect  languages  of  antiquity. 

Let  us  now  retrace  our  steps  back  to  the  time  when 
nervous  organization,  in  the  successive  generations  of  the 
whole  animal  series  regarded  as  one  great  family  of  kindred 
animals  successively  developed  out  of  a  common  stock,  be- 
gan to  act  in  such  a  way  as  to  evince  the  presence  of  what 
we  call  mind.     Once  attained,  this  improved  nervous  or- 


ORIGIN  OF  MIND.  399 

ganization  -would  be  transmitted  by  the  parents  to  new  in- 
dividuals ;  and  so  on  through  countless  generations,  just  as 
the  offspring  would  inherit  the  same  physical  structure  as 
the  parents  in  other  respects. 

Mental  phenomena  are  the  products  of  nervous  organi- 
zation. We  have  no  means  of  knowing  that  mind  is  an 
organism  or  an  entity.  If  it  is  an  existence  capable  of  sur- 
viving the  death  of  the  body,  which  evolution  neither  af- 
firms nor  denies,  you  must  go  to  revelation  for  the  grounds 
of  belief  in  its  immortality.  There  is  no 'Conflict  between 
the  evolution  theory  of  the  nature  of  mind  and  the  doc- 
trine of  immortality  as  taught  by  revealed  religion. 

SoPHEREUS.  I  am  not  disposed  to  constitute  myself  a 
champion  of  revealed  religion.  I  have  lately  read  in  the 
writings  of  some  well-meaning  persons,  whose  positions  and 
convictions  made  them  anxious  about  the  truths  of  revela- 
tion, expressions  of  the  opinion  that  there  is  no  necessary 
conflict  between  the  hypothesis  of  a  revelation  and  the 
teachings  of  evolution.  I  have  been  rather  surprised  by 
such  concessions.  But  through  all  our  discussions,  and 
throughout  all  my  reflections  and  inquiries,  I  have  excluded 
revealed  religion  from  the  number  of  proofs  of  our  immor- 
tality. But  it  seems  to  me  that,  as  to  the  possibility  of  a 
survival  of  the  mind  after  the  death  of  the  body,  you  have 
stated  yourself  out  of  court,  not  because  you  have  pro- 
pounded something  that  is  inconsistent  with  revelation, 
although  it  certainly  is,  but  because  you  have  made  mind 
to  consist  in  nothing  but  the  action  of  nervous  organiza- 
tion, and  when  that  has  perished  what  can  remain  ?  You 
may  say  that  science  does  not  undertake  to  determine  that 
mind  is  or  is  not  a  special  existence  capable  of  surviving 
the  body.  But,  observe  that  you  attribute  to  nervous  action 
the  production  of  phenomena  to  which  you  give  the  name 
of  mind,  when  the  nervous  action  evinces  some  power  of 
volitional  variation  and  control.     Now,  when  and  where 


400  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

did  this  begin,  in  the  long  series  of  animal  organisms  which 
you  assume  haye  been  successively  evolved  out  of  one  an- 
other ?  Eemember  that,  according  to  the  system  of  evolu- 
tion, there  are  supposed  to  have  been  countless  forms  of 
animal  organisms,  graduating  by  slow  improvements  into 
higher  and  higher  organisms.  Where  and  when  and  what 
was  the  first  animal  that  possessed  a  nervous  organization 
which  would  manifest  the  power  of  variation  in  so  marked 
a  degree  as  to  render  it  proper  to  speak  of  the  animal  as 
possessing  or  evincing  mind  ?  Are  not  the  works  of  natu- 
ralists of  the  evolution  school  filled  with  comparisons  of 
the  minds  of  different  animals,  and  do  they  not  contend 
that  in  many  of  them  there  are  manifestations  of  mental 
power,  of  the  exercise  of  reason  and  comparison,  and  a  voli- 
tional action  according  to  varying  circumstances  ?  Did, 
then,  these  manifestations  of  something  like  mental  power 
begin  in  the  anthropomorphous  ape  from  whom  we  are  sup- 
posed to  be  descended,  or  who  is  supposed  to  be  of  kin  to 
us  ?  Or  did  it  begin  in  any  one  and  which  of  the  innu- 
merable intermediate  forms  between  that  ape-like  creature 
and  the  primeval  man  ?  And  when  once  this  improved  and 
improving  nervous  organization  had  been  developed  and 
put  into  a  condition  to  be  transmitted  to  descendants,  until 
in  the  primeval  man  it  had  attained  its  highest  develop- 
ment, what  was  it  but  a  more  sensitive,  more  various,  and 
complex  condition  of  the  substance  of  which  all  nervous 
tissues  are  composed  ?  And  when  these  tissues  are  decom- 
posed and  resolved  into  their  original  material  elements, 
where  and  what  is  the  mind,  whether  of  man  or  beast  ?  It 
is  nowhere  and  nothing,  unless  you  suppose  that  the  im- 
proved and  improving  action  of  the  nervous  organization  at 
last  developed  an  existence  which  is  not  in  itself  material 
or  physical,  and  which  may  be  imperishable  and  indestruc- 
tible, while  the  material  and  physical  organs  by  and  through 
which  it  acts  for  a  time  perish  daily  in  our  sight.     If  this 


ORIGIN  OF  MIND.  401 

is  a  possible,  it  is  a  yery  improbable  hypothesis,  because  the 
nature  of  the  human  mind  points  to  a  very  different  origin. 

I  surely  do  not  need  to  tell  you  that  like  produces  like. 
If  the  mind  of  man  is  now  a  spiritual  essence,  it  is  a  wild 
conjecture  to  suppose  that  it  was  generated  out  of  the  ac- 
tion of  a  material  substance,  in  whatever  animal,  or  sup- 
posed si)ecies  of  animal,  its  genesis  is  imagined  to  have  be- 
gun. We  must  therefore  determine,  from  all  the  evidence 
within  our  reach,  whether  the  mind  is  a  spiritual  existence. 
If  it  is,  it  is  not  difficult  to  reach  a  rational  conclusion  that 
its  Creator  contrived  a  means  of  connecting  it  for  a  season 
with  the  bodily  organs,  and  made  the  generative  produc- 
tion of  each  new  individual  body  at  the  same  time  give 
birth  to  a  new  individual  mind,  whenever  a  new  child  is 
born  into  the  world.  We  can  not  discover  the  nature  of 
the  connection,  or  the  process  by  which  generative  produc- 
tion of  a  new  body  becomes  also  generative  production  of 
a  new  mind.  These  are  mysteries  that  are  hidden  from  us. 
But  the  fact  of  the  connection — the  simultaneous  produc- 
tion of  the  new  body  and  the  new  mind — is  a  fact  that  the 
birth  of  every  child  demonstrates.  Whether  the  union 
takes  place  at  any  time  before  birth,  or  whether  it  is  only 
at  birth  that  the  mind,  the  spiritual  essence,  comes  into  ex- 
istence, and  so  may  become  capable  of  an  endless  life,  we 
can  not  know.  But  that  this  occurs  at  some  time  in  the 
history  of  every  human  being,  we  are  justified  in  saying 
that  we  know. 

I  shall  now  contrast  your  hypothesis  of  the  origin  of  the 
human  mind  with  another  and  a  very  different  one ;  and, 
in  stating  it,  I  shall  borrow  nothing  from  the  Mosaic  ac- 
count of  the  creation  of  Adam  and  Eve.  I  shall  not  assert, 
on  the  authority  of  Moses,  that  God  breathed  into  Adam  a 
living  soul,  for  that  would  be  to  resort  to  a  kind  of  evidence 
which,  for  the  present,  I  mean  to  avoid,  and  which  would 
bring  into  consideration  the  nature  of  the  means  by  which 


402  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

tlie  Hebrew  historian  was  informed  of  the  fact  which  he 
relates,  and  which  he  could  have  known  in  no  other  way. 
It  would  also  give  rise  to  a  question  of  what  was  meant  by 
*'a  living  soul."  But  I  shall  assume  that  there  is  a  spirit- 
ual aud  a  material  world ;  that  a  spiritual  existence  is  one 
thing  and  a  material  existence  is  another.  I  shall  assume 
that  there  is  a  spiritual  world,  because  all  our  commonest 
experience,  our  introspection  and  consciousness,  our  obser- 
vation of  what  the  human  mind  can  do,  its  operations  and 
its  productions,  its  capacity  to  originate  thought  and  to 
send  it  down  the  course  of  ages,  its  power  to  recognize  and 
obey  a  moral  law  as  a  divine  command,  the  monuments  of 
every  kind  which  attest  that  it  is  something  which  is  not 
matter  or  material  substance,  prove  to  us  that  the  human 
mind  is  essentially  a  spiritual  existence  ;  and  that  while  it 
acts  and  must  act  by  and  through  bodily  organs,  so  long  as 
it  acts  in  this  World,  it  is  a  being  quite  distinct  from  all 
the  physical  substance  and  physical  organism  with  which  it 
is  connected  for  a  time.  Physiology  alone  can  teach  us 
this  much  at  least,  that  mind  is  not  matter ;  and  experi- 
ence, consciousness,  and  observation  teach  us  that  while 
the  action  of  the  mind  may  be  suspended  for  a  time  when 
the  nervous  organization  can  not  normally  act,  from  dis- 
ease or  injury,  the  mind  itself  is  not  destroyed,  but  its  ac- 
tion may  be  restored  with  the  restoration  of  the  brain  to  its 
normal  condition. 

I  am  going  to  assume  another  thing — the  existence  of 
the  Creator,  the  Supreme  Governor  of  the  universe,  hav- 
ing under  his  control  the  whole  realms  of  the  spiritual  and 
the  material  world ;  alike  capable  of  giving  existence  to 
spiritual  entities  and  to  material  organisms,  and  capable 
of  uniting  them  by  any  connection  and  for  any  purpose 
that  might  seem  to  him  good.  I  shall  assume  this,  because 
some  of  you  evolutionists  concede,  if  I  understand  rightly, 
the  existence  and  capacities  of  the  Supreme  Being,  since 


HYPOTHESIS  OF  THE  FmST  PAIR.  403 

you  assume,  and  rightly,  that  the  whole  question  relates  to 
his  methods  ;  and  you  believe  that  he  chose  the  method  of 
evolution  instead  of  the  method  of  special  creation  for  all 
the  types  of  animal  life  excepting  the  aboriginal  and  created 
lowest  form,  out  of  which  all  the  others  have  been  evolved. 
With  these  two  assumptions,  then,  the  nature  of  a  spiritual 
existence,  and  the  existence  and  capacities  of  the  Creator, 
I  now  state  to  you  the  opposite  hypothesis  of  the  origin  and 
nature  of  the  human  mind. 

A  pair  of  human  beings,  male  and  female,  is  created  by 
the  hand  and  will  of  the  Almighty ;  and  to  each  is  given 
a  physical  organism,  and  a  spiritual,  intellectual  self,  or 
mind,  which  is  endowed  with  consciousness  and  capable 
of  thought.  Why  is  this  a  rational  supposition,  aside  from 
any  evidence  of  the  fact  derived  from  its  assertion  by  an 
inspired  or  a  divinely. instructed  witness  ?  It  is  so,  because, 
when  this  aboriginal  pair  of  human  creatures  fulfill  the  law 
of  their  being,  by  the  procreation  of  other  creatures  of  the 
same  kind,  the  offspring  must  be  supposed  to  possess  what- 
ever the  parents  possessed  of  peculiar  and  characteristic 
organization.  This  law  of  transmission  is  stamped  upon  all 
the  forms  of  organic  life  ;  and  we  may  well  apply  it  to  the 
first  pair  of  human  beings.  Its  operation  must  have  begun 
in  them  and  their  offspring.  Every  law  that  proceeded 
from  the  will  of  the  Supreme  Being  began  to  operate  at 
some  time ;  and  this  law,  like  all  others,  must  have  been 
put  in  operation  by  the  Creator  at  some  definite  period. 
He  created  in  the  first  pair  a  bodily  organization,  and  he 
created  in  each  of  them  the  spiritual  entity  that  we  now 
call  mind,  and  established  its  connection  with  their  bodily 
organs.  He  established  in  them  also  the  power  of  procre- 
ating offspring  ;  and  this  included  the  production  of  a  new 
individual  of  the  same  species,  in  whom  would  be  united, 
by  the  same  mysterious  bond,  the  same  kind  of  physical 
organization  and  the  same  kind  of  spiritual  or  intellectual 


404:  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

existence,  whicli  is  not  matter,  and  could  not  have  been 
generated  out  of  matter  alone.  The  beginning  of  this  con- 
nection of  body  and  mind  in  the  first  parents  was  an  occa- 
sional and  special  exercise  of  the  divine  power.  It  was  not 
a  miraculous  exercise  of  power,  because  a  miracle,  in  the 
proper  sense,  implies  some  action  aside  from  a  previously 
established  course  of  things.  It  was  simply  a  first  exercise 
of  the  power  in  the  case  of  the  creation  of  the  first  human 
pair ;  that  is,  it  was  the  establishment  in  them,  specially, 
of  the  union  of  the  body  and  soul.  Its  repetition  in  the 
offspring,  for  all  time,  and  through  successive  generations, 
was  left  to  the  operation  of  the  laws  of  procreation  and 
heredity.  The  nature  and  operation  of  those  laws  are 
wrapped  in  mystery  ;  but  about  the  fact  of  their  existence, 
and  of  the  compound  procreation  of  a  new  body  and  a  new 
mind  at  every  new  birth,  there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever. 

It  seems  to  me  that  this  hypothesis  has  in  its  favor  a 
vast  preponderance  of  probability,  because — 

1.  The  generation  of  mind  or  spirit  out  of  matter  is  in- 
conceivable. 

2.  The  creation  of  mind  by  the  Almighty  is  just  as  con- 
ceivable as  his  creation  of  a  material  organism ;  and  the 
latter  is  conceded  by  all  naturalists  who  admit  that  there 
was  a  first  animal  organism ;  and  even  some  of  the  evolu- 
tionists hold  that  the  first  animal  organism  was  directly 
fashioned  by  the  Creator,  although  all  the  succeeding  organ- 
isms were  formed,  as  they  contend,  by  natural  and  sexual 
selection. 

3.  The  nature  of  mind — of  the  human  mind — is  the 
same  in  all  individuals  of  the  race.  They  may  differ  in 
mental  power,  but  they  all  possess  an  intellectual  principle 
that  is  the  same  in  kind.  To  the  production  of  mind,  or 
its  formation,  the  process  of  evolution  was  not  necessary. 
Not  only  was  it  unnecessary,  but  in  the  nature  of  things  it 
was  not  adapted  to  do  what  it  is  supposed  to  have  done  in 


ARBITRARY  ASSUMPTION   OF  A  FIRST  PAIR.    405 

the  production  of  physical  organisms.  To  suppose  that  the 
Creator,  instead  of  the  direct  exercise  of  his  power  of  crea- 
tion, left  it  to  the  material  laws  of  natural  and  sexual  selec- 
tion to  produce  a  mind,  is  to  suppose  him  to  have  resorted 
to  a  method  that  was  both  unnecessary  and  indirect,  and 
was  furthermore  incapable  of  effecting  that  kind  of  product. 
In  reasoning  about  the  methods  of  the  Creator,  it  is  cer- 
tainly irrational  to  suppose  him  to  have  resorted  to  one  that 
was  so  ill  adapted  to  the  accomplishment  of  his  object.  In 
the  accomplishment  of  some  physical  objects,  we  may  weU 
suppose  that  they  have  been  brought  about  by  physical 
agencies  that  have  operated  very  slowly  and  indirectly ;  and 
we  can  see  that  this  has  often  been  the  case  in  regard  to 
many  material  products.  But  for  the  production  of  mind, 
for  the  accomplishment  of  a  spiritual  existence,  there  can 
be  imagined  no  secondary  agencies,  no  gradual  growth  out 
of  antecedent  existences  or  substances,  no  evolution  out  of 
some  other  and  that  other  a  material  organism.  The  first 
mind,  the  first  human  soul,  must  have  come  direct  from 
the  hand  and  will  of  God.  The  succeeding  minds  may 
well  have  been  left  to  owe  their  existence  to  the  laws  of 
procreation,  by  a  process  which  we  can  not  understand,  but 
of  which  we  have  proof  in  the  birth  of  every  child  that  has 
been  born  of  woman. 

KosMicos.  We  now  have  the  two  hypotheses  of  the 
origin  and  nature  of  the  human  mind  fairly  before  us  ;  and 
here  I  must  point  out  to  you  wherein  you  do  injustice  to 
my  side  of  the  question.  In  the  first  place,  your  assump- 
tion of  one  pair  of  progenitors  of  the  human  race  from 
whom  have  diverged  all  the  varieties  of  the  race,  does  not 
encounter  the  evolution  process  of  man's  descent  as  an  ani- 
mal. It  is  either  an  arbitrary  assumption,  or  it  is  derived 
from  the  Mosaic  account  of  the  creation,  which,  in  a  scien- 
tific point  of  view,  and  aside  from  the  supposed  authority 
of  that  story,  is  just  as  arbitrary  an  assumption  as  if  the 


406  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION"? 

book  of  Genesis  had  never  existed.  Take,  therefore,  Dar- 
win's hypothesis  of  the  zoological  series  :  First,  a  fish-like 
animal,  of  course  inhabiting  the  water  ;  next,  the  amphibi- 
ans, capable  of  living  in  the  water  and  on  the  land  ;  next, 
the  ancient  marsupials  ;  next,  the  quadrumana  and  all  the 
higher  mammals,  among  whom  are  to  be  classed  the  Simi- 
adcB  or  monkeys ;  and  out  of  these  came  the  hairy,  tailed 
quadruped,  arboreal  in  its  habits,  from  which  man  is  de- 
scended. This  long  line  of  descent  is  filled  with  diversified 
forms,  intermediate  between  the  several  principal  forms 
which  are  known  to  us,  and  which  were  successively  the 
progenitors  of  man.  Now,  hear  Darwin  on  the  subject  of 
one  pair  of  progenitors  : 

"  But  since  he  [man]  attained  to  the  rank  of  manhood 
he  has  diverged  into  distinct  races,  or,  as  they  may  be 
more  fitly  called,  sub-species.  Some  of  these,  such  as  the 
negro  and  European,  are  so  distinct  that,  if  specimens  had 
been  brought  to  a  naturalist  without  any  further  informa- 
tion, they  would  undoubtedly  have  been  considered  by  him 
as  good  and  true  species.  Nevertheless,  all  the  races  agree 
in  so  many  unimportant  details  of  structure  and  in  so  many 
mental  peculiarities,  that  these  can  be  accounted  for  only 
by  inheritance  from  a  common  progenitor ;  and  a  progeni- 
tor thus  characterized  would  probably  deserve  to  rank  as 
man.  It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  divergence  of  each 
race  from  the  other  races,  and  of  all  from  a  common  stock, 
can  be  traced  back  to  any  one  pair  of  progenitors.  On  the 
contrary,  at  every  stage  in  the  process  of  modification  all 
the  individuals  which  were  in  any  way  better  fitted  for 
their  conditions  of  life,  though  in  different  degrees,  would 
have  survived  in  greater  numbers  than  the  less  well  fitted. 
The  process  would  have  been  like  that  followed  by  man, 
when  he  does  not  intentionally  select  particular  individuals, 
but  breeds  from  all  the  superior  individuals  and  neglects 
the  inferior.     He  thus  slowly  but  surely  modifies  his  stock. 


ACQUISITION  OF  MENTAL  POWERS.  407 

and  unconsciously  forms  a  new  strain.  So  with  respect  to 
modifications  acquired  independently  of  selection,  and  due 
to  variations  arising  from  the  nature  of  the  organism  and 
the  action  of  the  surrounding  conditions,  or  from  changed 
hahits  of  life,  no  single  pair  will  have  been  modified  much 
more  than  the  other  pairs  inhabiting  the  same  country,  for 
all  will  have  been  continually  blended  through  free  inter- 
crossing."* 

The  meaning  of  this  is  that  if  you  go  back  to  the  period 
when  an  animal,  by  the  slow  process  of  modification  which 
was  continually  operating  among  the  preceding  organisms, 
had  been  raised  to  the  present  state  of  man,  and  then  fol- 
low out  the  divergencies  into  the  distinct  races  of  men, 
those  divergencies  would  not  have  occurred  in  consequence 
of  any  one  pair  having  been  modified  much  more  than  the 
other  pairs  inhabiting  the  same  country,  but  all  the  indi- 
viduals would  have  undergone  a  continually  blending  pro- 
cess through  unrestrained  intercrossing  ;  and  those  individ- 
uals of  both  sexes,  who  became  in  a  superior  degree  fitted 
for  their  conditions  of  life,  would  have  survived  in  greater 
numbers  than  the  less  well  fitted,  and  would  have  trans- 
mitted to  their  posterity  those  peculiarities  which  tended 
at  last  to  produce  different  races  of  the  human  family.  So 
that  the  notion  of  a  single  pair  of  the  negro  variety,  or  of 
a  single  pair  of  the  Caucasian  variety,  formed  and  com- 
pleted as  an  independent  stock,  is  not  necessary  to  account 
for  these  varieties. 

To  apply  this,  now,  to  the  slow  production  of  man's  in- 
tellectual faculties,  we  must,  if  we  would  do  justice  to 
Darwin's  hypothesis  of  the  method  in  which  he  was  devel- 
oped as  an  animal,  bear  in  mind  that  his  mental  powers, 
like  his  animal  structure,  have  been  the  necessary  acquire- 
ment of  new  powers  and  capacities  by  gradation,  through 

*  Darwin's  "  Descent  of  Man,"  pp.  608,  609. 


408  0REATI05T  OR  EVOLUTION  ? 

the  perpetual  process  of  modification,  and  retention  and 
transmission  of  the  new  acquisitions.  Darwin,  indeed,  does 
not  professedly  undertake  the  genealogy  of  the  human 
mind ;  but  he  appears  to  hold  the  opinion  that  in  future 
psychology  will  be  based  on  the  gradual  acquisition  of  each 
mentar  power  and  capacity,  as  distinguished  from  their 
complete  production  in  any  one  pair,  or  in  any  one  being ; 
and  he  refers  to  Herbert  Spencer  as  having  already  securely 
laid  the  foundation  for  this  new  psychology.* 

I  take,  therefore,  the  great  English  naturalist  as  the 
person  who  has  most  satisfactorily  explained  the  origin  of 
man  as  an  animal,  and  the  great  English  philosopher  as 
the  person  who  has  propounded  the  most  satisfactory  the- 
ory of  the  origin  of  the  human  mind.  The  two  hypotheses 
run  parallel  to  and  support  each  other.  Man,  as  respects 
his  mere  animal  structure,  is  an  organism  developed  by  a 
slow  process  of  modification  out  of  preceding  organisms. 
His  mental  faculties  have  one  by  one  grown  out  of  the 
operation  of  the  same  physical  agencies  that  have  formed 
his  animal  structure,  and  they  have  not  been  bestowed  at 
once  upon  any  one  pair,  or  upon  any  one  individual  of  the 
race.  After  they  have  all  been  acquired,  as  we  now  know 
and  recognize  them,  they  have  descended  to  the  successive 
generations  of  the  race. 

SoPHEREUS.  I  have  studied  Mr.  Spencer's  *^  System  of 
Psychology,"  but  I  do  not  know  whether  we  understand  it 
alike.  You  say  that  he  has  propounded  the  most  satisfac- 
tory theory  of  the  origin  of  mind.  Assuming  that  mind 
was  evolved  as  an  aggregate  of  powers  and  capacities,  slowly 
acquired,  pari  passu  with  the  evolution  of  the  animal 
organism,  be  good  enough  to  tell  me  whether  Mr.  Spencer 
does  or  does  not  conclude  that  mind  is  anything  more  than 
an  aggregate  of  powers  and  capacities  of  the  nervous  organi- 

♦  Darwin's  "  Origin  of  Species,"  p.  428. 


SPENCER'S  PSYCHOLOGY.  409 

zation.  I  am  quite  aware  of  the  mode  in  which  he  meets 
the  charge  of  materialism  ;  but  waiving  for  the  present  the 
question  of  materialism,  I  should  be  glad  to  know,  accord- 
ing to  your  understanding  of  his  philosophy,  what  he  con- 
siders mind  to  be. 

KosMicos.  To  answer  your  question  requires  an  analy- 
sis of  Spencer's  "Principles  of  Psychology."  You  have 
here  on  your  table  the  third  edition  of  that  work,  which 
received  his  latest  corrections  and  additions.*  If  you  look 
at  the  preface  of  this  edition,  you  will  see  that,  as  between 
Kealism  and  Idealism,  he  enunciates  a  view  which  recog- 
nizes an  element  of  truth  in  each,  but  rejects  the  rest.  By 
this  "  Transfigured  Kealism  "  he  aims  to  conciliate  what  is 
true  in  Realism  with  what  is  true  in  Idealism  ;  and  it  is  by 
this  conciliation  that  he  answers  the  partisans  of  both  sys- 
tems, who  will  not  sacrifice  any  part  of  their  respective  doc- 
trines. It  is  important  for  you  to  remember  this  in  judg- 
ing of  his  psychological  system.  He  begins  by  a  description 
of  the  structure  and  functions  of  the  nervous  system,  and 
the  nature  of  nervous  actions.  Without  repeating  in  all 
its  minute  details  the  structure  which  he  describes,  it  is 
enough  to  say  that  in  all  animals,  from  the  lowest  to  the 
highest,  this  peculiar  part  of  the  organism  which  we  call 
the  nervous  system  is  comi)osed  of  two  tissues  which  differ 
considerably  from  those  composing  the  rest  of  the  organ- 
ism. In  color  they  are  distinguished  from  one  another  as 
gray  and  white,  and  in  their  minute  structures  as  vesicular 
and  fibrous.  In  the  gray  tissue,  the  vesicles  or  corpuscles 
contain  a  soft  protein  substance,  with  granules  imbedded  in 
it,  consisting  of  fatty  matter.  The  more  developed  of  these 
nerve-corpuscles  give  off  branching  processes,  and  the 
terminations  of  nerve-fibers  are  distributed  among  them. 

*  "  The  Principles  of  Psychology,"  by  Herbert  Spencer,  third  edition. 
New  York :  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  1885. 


4:10  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

The  white  tissue  is  composed  of  miDute  tubes  containing  a 
medullary  substance  or  pulp,  viscid  like  oil.  Imbedded  in 
this  pulp,  which  fills  the  tubes,  there  lies  a  delicate  fiber  or 
axis-cylinder,  which  is  uniform  and  continuous  instead  of 
having  its  continuity  broken  by  fat-granules.  This  central 
thread  is  the  essential  nerve  ;  and  the  sheath  of  medullary 
matter,  and  its  surrounding  membranous  sheath,  are  only 
its  accessories.  While,  therefore,  the  matter  of  nerve-fiber 
has  much  in  common  with  the  matter  of  nerve- vesicle,  in 
the  latter  the  protein  substance  contains  more  water,  is 
mingled  with  fat-granules,  and  forms  part  of  an  unstable 
mass ;  whereas  in  the  former,  the  nerve-tube,  the  protein 
substance,  is  denser,  is  distinct  from  the  fatty  compounds 
that  surround  it,  and  so  presents  an  arrangement  that  is 
relatively  stable. 

Conceive,  then,  of  this  interlaced  physical  structure  ex- 
tending throughout  the  whole  organism  as  a  kind  of  circu- 
lar mechanism,  having  its  periphery  at  the  surface  of  the 
body  and  limbs,  ramifying  among  and  into  the  internal 
organs,  with  various  nerve-centers  distributed  through  the 
interior  mechanism,  and  the  one  great  nerve-center  in  the 
brain.  Conceive  of  this  structure,  further,  afe  fed  continu- 
ally by  the  blood-vessels,  which  repair  its  waste  of  tissue 
and  keep  it  in  proper  tone  and  activity.  Then  imagine  it 
as  first  put  in  operation  in  some  animal  in  whom  it  has 
become  developed  as  we  now  know  it  in  ourselves,  and  let 
that  animal  stand  as  the  primeval  man,  who  has  become, 
by  inherited  transmission  of  gradual  accumulations,  pos- 
sessed of  this  consummate  development  of  nervous  organiza- 
tion. You  can  then  observe  the  method  of  its  action,  and 
can  perceive  how  mind  became  developed,  and  what  it  is. 

What  I  have  now  given  you  is  only  a  general  description 
of  the  structure  of  the  nervous  mechanism,  and  in  order  to 
understand  its  functions,  we  may  take  it  up,  in  an  individ- 
ual, at  a  point  of  time  when  it  had  not  experienced  a  single 


NERVOUS  ACTION.  411 

moYement  or  change  from  a  state  of  rest,  but  when  it  was 
completely  fitted  to  act.  Obserre,  then,  that  its  action  will 
consist  in  the  origination  and  accomplishment  of  motion  ; 
or,  in  other  words,  in  molecular  change  of  the  substance 
composing  the  nerves,  which,  for  illustration  only,  may  be 
likened  to  the  conductor  through  which  the  molecular  dis- 
turbance passes  which  is  popularly,  but  not  scientifically, 
called  the  electric  fluid.  At  the  surface  of  the  body  and 
limbs,  the  external  termini  of  the  nerves  are  exposed  to  dis- 
turbance by  contact  with  an  external  object.  Along  the 
highly  sensitive  and  minute  conductor,  the  nerve  which 
has  by  contact  with  an  external  object  at  its  outer  extrem- 
ity received  a  slight  shock,  there  passes  through  the  fluid  -. 
or  semi-fluid  substance  of  the  nerve  a  wave  of  disturbance, 
or  a  succession  of  such  waves.  This  disturbance  reaches 
the  brain,  the  great  nerve-center,  where  it  becomes  a  feel- 
ing. In  this  way  is  generated  the  feeling  of  contact  with 
an  external  object,  and  this  is  what  is  commonly  called  the 
sense  of  touch,  which  is  simply  a  feeling  produced  in  the 
great  nerve-center  of  the  brain.  Now,  to  reyerse  the  pro- 
cess, let  us  suppose  that  this  feeling,  caused  by  touching  an 
external  object,  provokes  or  excites  a  desire  to  remove  that 
object,  or  to  get  rid  of  the  continuance  of  the  feeling,  and 
to  be  without  the  irritation  or  pain  which  it  is  causing. 
From  the  central  seat  of  nervous  action,  the  brain,  along 
another  nerve,  there  proceeds  a  wave,  or  a  series  of  waves, 
in  the  fluid  or  semi-fluid  substance  of  which  the  conductor 
of  that  nerve  is  composed,  and  motion  is  communicated  to 
some  muscle  or  set  of  muscles,  which  need  to  be  put  in 
motion  in  order  to  break  the  contact  with  the  external 
object.  In  like  manner,  all  internal  organs  of  the  body, 
the  viscera,  are  supplied  with  a  system  of  nerves  connected 
with  the  great  nerve-center.  If  a  disturbance  arises  in  one 
of  the  viscera,  some  action  that  is  abnormal,  a  sensation 
that  is  called  pain  is  produced.  So,  too,  in  regard  to  the 
19 


412  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

normal  action  of  the  yiscera,  kept  up  by  involuntary  moye- 
luents — those  moyements  originate  in  and  are  transmitted 
from  the  nerve-center,  by  waves  in  the  fluid  or  semi-fluid 
substance  of  which  the  special  nerves  are  composed,  whose 
office  it  is  to  cause  the  necessary  movements  in  the  muscu- 
lar substance,  or  the  tissue,  of  the  particular  organ. 

In  this  way  began,  in  the  supposed  individual,  those 
simpler  states  of  feeling  which  pain  or  irritation  produced 
in  the  nervous  system,  and  those  other  involuntary  move- 
ments which  were  essential  to  the  normal  and  unconscious 
action  of  the  viscera.  These  varying  conditions  of  the 
highly  sensitive  nervous  system,  which  constitute  and  are 
rightly  denominated  feelings,  were  constantly  repeated ; 
and,  so  far  as  they  are  capable  of  becoming  a  part  of  con- 
sciousness, that  consciousness  is  a  repetition  of  the  same 
nervous  actions  many  times  over.  Pass,  then,  from  the 
feelings  called  sensations  to  the  feelings  called  emotions, 
and  it  will  be  found  that  while  both  are  states  of  nervous 
action,  the  former  are  peripherally  initiated  and  the  latter 
are  centrally  initiated.  The  meaning  of  this  is  that  a  sen- 
sation is  aa  effect  produced  at  the  nerve-center  by  the  trans- 
mission, from  the  outer  terminus  of  a  particular  nerve, 
of  the  waves  in  the  fluid  or  semi-fluid  substance  of  the 
nerve.  The  strong  forms  of  feeling  called  sensations  are 
peripherally  initiated,  and  the  feelings  called  emotions  are 
centrally  initiated.  Now,  any  feeling  of  any  kind  is  direct- 
ly known  by  each  person  in  no  other  place  than  his  own 
consciousness  ;  and  the  question  is.  Of  what  is  conscious- 
ness composed  ?  In  order  to  afford  an  answer  to  this  ques- 
tion, Mr.  Spencer  proceeds  to  examine  the  substance  of 
mind,  and  then  passes  to  a  consideration  of  the  compo- 
sition of  mind.  These  are  not  the  same  thing ;  for,  if 
there  be  no  such  thing,  properly  speaking,  as  the  substance 
of  mind,  its  composition,  or  its  nature,  must  be  looked  for 
in  another  way.     The  expression  **  substance  of  mind,"  if 


SPENCER'S  COMPOSITION  OF  MIND.  413 

nsed  in  any  way  but  that  in  which  we  use  the  x  of  an  alge- 
braic equation,  has  no  meaning.  If  we  undertake  to  inter- 
pret mind  in  the  terms  of  matter,  as  crude  materialism 
does,  we  are  at  once  brought  to  this  result,  that  we  know, 
and  can  know,  nothing  of  the  ultimate  substance  of  either. 
"We  know  iaatter  only  as  forms  of  certain  units ;  but  the 
ultimate  unit,  of  which  the  ultimate  homogeneous  units 
are  probably  composed,  must  remain  absolutely  unknown. 
In  like  manner,  if  mind  consists  of  homogeneous  units  of 
feeling,  the  ultimate  unit,  as  a  substance,  must  remain  un- 
known. When,  therefore,  we  think  of  the  substance  of 
mind,  the  simplest  form  under  which  we  can  think  of  it  is 
nothing  but  a  symbol  of  something  that  can  never  be  ren- 
dered into  thought,  just  as  the  concept  we  form  to  ourselves 
of  matter  is  but  the  symbol  of  some  form  of  power  abso- 
lutely and  forever  unknown  to  us,  as  the  representation  of 
all  objective  activities  in  terms  of  motion  is  only  a  symbolic 
representation,  and  not  a  knowledge  of  them.  Symbols  of 
unknown  forms  of  existence,  whether  in  the  case  of  matter, 
motion,  or  mind,  are  mere  representations  which  do  not 
determine  anything  about  the  ultimate  substance  of  either. 
"Our  only  course  is  constantly  to  recognize  our  symbols  as 
symbols  only,  and  to  rest  content  with  that  duality  of  them 
which  our  constitution  necessitates.  The  unknowable  as 
manifested  to  us  within  the  limits  of  consciousness  in  the 
shape  of  feeling,  being  no  less  inscrutable  than  the  un- 
knowable as  manifested  beyond  the  limits  of  consciousness 
in  other  shapes,  we  approach  no  nearer  to  understanding 
the  last  by  rendering  it  into  the  first.''  * 

Discarding,  then,  the  expression  "substance  of  mind," 
excepting  as  a  mere  symbol,  Mr.  Spencer  passes  to  the 
"  composition  of  mind " ;  and  here  we  reach  his  explana- 
tion of  mind  as  an  evolution  traceable  through  ascending 


Principlea  of  Psychology,"  i,  p.  162. 


414?  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

stages  of  composition,  conformably  to  the  laws  of  eyolution 
in  general,  so  that  the  composition  of  mind,  as  something 
evolved  out  of  simple  elements,  does  not  need  or  involve  a 
symbolical  representation  in  the  terms  of  matter. 

The  method  of  composition,  by  which  the  whole  fabric 
of  mind  is  constituted,  from  the  formation  of  its  simplest 
feelings  up  to  the  formation  of  the  complex  aggregates  of 
feelings  which  are  its  highest  developments,  can  now  be 
sketched.  A  sensation  is  formed  by  the  consolidation  of 
successive  units  of  feeling;  but  the  feelings  called  sensa- 
tions can  not  of  themselves  constitute  mind,  even  when 
many  of  different  kinds  are  present  together.  When,  how- 
ever, each  sensation,  as  it  occurs,  is  linked  in  association 
with  the  faint  forms  of  previous  sensations  of  the  same 
kind,  mind  is  constituted  ;  for,  by  the  consolidation  of  suct 
cessive  sensations,  there  is  formed  a  knowledge  of  the  j)ar- 
fcicular  sensation  as  a  distinct  subject  of  what  we  call 
thought,  or  the  smallest  separable  portion  of  thought  as 
distinguished  from  mere  confused  sentiency.  Thus,  as  the 
primitive  units  of  feeling  are  compounded  into  sensations, 
by  the  same  method  simple  sensations,  and  the  relations 
among  them,  are  compounded  into  states  of  definite  con- 
sciousness. The  next  highest  stage  of  mental  composition 
is  a  repetition  of  the  same  process.  Take  a  special  object, 
which  produces  in  us  a  vivid  cluster  of  related  sensations. 
When  these  are  united  with  the  faint  forms  of  like  clusters 
that  have  been  before  produced  by  such  objects,  we  know 
the  object.  Knowledge  of  it  is  the  assimilation  of  the 
combined  group  of  real  feelings  which  ifc  excites,  with  one 
or  more  preceding  ideal  groups  which  were  once  excited 
by  objects  of  the  same  kind  ;  and,  when  the  series  of  ideal 
groups  is  large,  the  knowledge  is  clear.  In  the  same  way, 
by  the  connections  between  each  special  cluster  of  related 
sensations  produced  by  one  object,  and  the  special  clusters 
generated  by  other  objects,  a  wider  knowledge  is  obtained. 


"TRANSFIGURED  REALISM."  415 

By  assimilating  the  more  or  less  complex  relations  ex- 
hibited in  the  actions  of  things  in  space  and  time,  with 
other  such  complex  relations,  knowledge  of  the  powers  and 
habits  of  things  is  constituted.  If  we  can  not  so  assimi- 
late them,  or  parts  of  them,  we  haye  no  knowledge  of  their 
actions.  So  it  is,  without  definite  limit,  through  those 
tracts  of  higher  consciousness  which  are  formed  of  clusters 
of  clusters  of  feelings  held  together  by  extremely  involved 
relations.  This  law  of  the  composition  of  mind  is,  there- 
fore, the  assimilation  of  real  feelings  and  groups  of  real 
feelings  with  the  ideal  feelings  or  ideal  groups  of  feelings 
which  objects  of  the  same  kind  once  produced.  You  can 
follow  out,  without  my  assistance,  the  correspondence 
which  Mr.  Spencer  exhibits  between  the  views  of  mental 
composition  and  the  general  truths  respecting  nervous 
structure  and  nervous  functions  with  which  he  began  the 
treatment  of  mind,  which  consists  largely,  and  in  one  sense 
entirely,  of  feelings.  The  inferior  tracts  of  consciousness 
are  constituted  by  feelings  ;  and  the  feelings  are  the  mate- 
rials out  of  which  are  constituted  the  superior  tracts  of 
consciousness,  and  thus  intellect  is  evolved  by  structural 
combination.  **  Everywhere  feeling  is  the  substance  of 
which>  when  it  is  present,  intellect  is  the  form.  And 
where  intellect  is  not  present,  or  but  little  present,  mind 
consists  of  feelings  that  are  unformed  or  but  little 
formed."*  Does  not  this  statement,  which  in  substance  is 
Mr.  Spencer's  explanation  of  the  formation  of  mind,  ex- 
plain to  you  why  he  denominates  it  ^'transfigured  real- 
ism"? 

SoPHEREus.  I  have  attentively  and  carefully  read  Mr. 
Spencer's  book  from  which  you  have  made  this  partial 
analysis  of  his  view  of  the  nature  of  mind,  but  whether  it 
is  realism  *  transfigured,"  or  whatever  is,  I  think  it  must 

*  "  Principles  of  Psychology,"  ii,  p.  503. 


416  CKEATIOiT  OR  EVOLUTION? 

be  admitted  that  its  basis  is  a  truly  realistic  one ;  for  it 
comes  back  at  last  to  just  what  I  suggested  to  you  at  tbe 
beginning  of  this  discussion,  that  mind,  according  to  his 
yiew,  is  constituted  by  the  action  of  the  nervous  system,  or, 
in  other  words,  that  mind  consists  of  the  phenomena  of 
movements  which  take  place  in  a  physical  structure.  If 
this  is  all  that  can  be  predicated  of  mind,  it  is  not  some- 
thing that  can  have  an  independent  and  continuous  exist- 
ence after  the  dissolution  of  the  physical  structure  called 
the  nervous  system.  That  structure  is  one  that  is  analo- 
gous in  its  action  to  the  other  part  of  the  organism  by 
which  digestion,  or  the  assimilation  of  food,  is  carried  on. 
We  might  as  well  suppose  that  by  the  action  of  the  digest- 
ive system  there  has  been  constituted  a  something  which 
will  remain  as  a  digestive  function  after  the  organs  of  di- 
gestion have  perished,  as  to  suppose  that  the  action  of  the' 
nervous  system  has  constituted  a  something  which  will  re- 
main mind,  a  conscious  and  independent  existence,  after 
the  nervous  system  has  been  resolved  into  its  original  mate- 
rial elements.  Indeed,  I  do  not  understand  Mr.  Spencer's 
philosophy  as  including,  providing  for,  or  leading  to,  any 
possible  continued  existence  of  the  mind  after  the  death  of 
the  body.  He  seems  to  exclude  it  altogether.  There  is  a 
passage  at  the  end  of  one  of  his  chapters  which  appears  to 
be  a  summary  of  his  whole  philosophic  scheme,  and  which 
is  one  of  the  dreariest  conclusions  I  have  ever  met  with. 
"Once  more,"  he  says,  "we  are  brought  round  to  the  con- 
clusion repeatedly  reached  by  other  routes,  that  behind  all 
manifestations,  inner  and  outer,  there  is  a  Power  manifested. 
Here,  as  before,  it  has  become  clear  that  while  the  nature 
of  this  Power  can  not  be  known,  while  we  lack  the  faculty 
of  forming  even  the  dimmest  conception  of  it,  yet  its  uni- 
versal presence  is  the  absolute  fact  without  which  there 
can  be  no  relative  facts.  Every  feeling  and  thought  being 
but  transitory,  an  entire  life  made  up  of  such  feelings 


DEFECT  OF  THE  SPENOEKIAN  PHILOSOPHY.    417 

and  thoughts  being  also  but  transitory,  nay,  the  objects 
amid  which  life  is  passed,  though  less  transitory,  being 
severally  in  course  of  losing  their  individualities  quickly  or 
slowly  ;  we  learn  that  the  one  thing  permanent  is  the  Un- 
knowable Keality  hidden  under  all  these  changing  shapes."  * 
I  will  not  say  that  the  mournful  character  of  this  hope- 
lessness of  human  destiny  is  proof  of  its  unsoundness.  I 
have  accustomed  myself  to  accept  results,  whatever  may  be 
the  gloom  in  which  they  involve  us,  provided  they  are  de- 
ductions of  sound  reasoning  ;  and  our  wishes  or  hopes  can 
not  change  the  constitution  of  the  universe  or  become 
important  evidence  for  or  against  any  view  of  what  that 
constitution  is.  But  let  me  ask,  what  does  this  philosopher 
mean  by  the  transitory  character  of  an  entire  life  made  up 
of  transitory  feelings  and  thoughts,  occupied  throughout 
their  continuance  with  transitory  objects,  or  objects  which 
are  quickly  or  slowly  losing  their  individualities  ?  "What 
possible  room  does  he  leave  for  the  development  and  disci- 
pline of  an  immortal  being,  supposing  that  man  is  an  im- 
mortal being,  by  an  entire  life  passed  in  feelings,  thoughts, 
and  action  about  objects  which,  relatively  to  the  individual, 
may,  quickly  or  slowly,  pass  away  from  him?  Or,  what 
room  does  he  allow  for  the  effect  on  such  a  being  of  an 
entire  life  spent  in  the  pursuit  of  objects  or  the  enjoyment 
of  pleasures  which  develop  only  his  baser  nature  and  unfit 
him  for  anything  else?  In  any  scheme  of  philosophy 
which  omits  to  regard  this  life  as  a  preparatory  school  for 
some  other  life,  it  seems  to  me  that  somethiog  is  left  out 
which  ought  to  be  included,  and  which  ought  to  be  includ- 
ed for  the  very  reason  that  the  evidence  which  tends  to 
show  that  mind  is  not  constituted  as  Mr.  Spencer  supposes, 
but  that  it  is  an  existence  of  a  special  character,  not  gener- 
ated by  the  action  of  a  physical  structure,  but  deriving  its 

*  "  Principles  of  Psychology,"  ii,  p.  503. 


418  CREATIOi^r  OR  EYOLUTIOI^? 

existence  from  the  direct  action  of  the  creating  Power,  is 
so  strong  that,  if  we  leave  this  conclusion  out  of  the  hy- 
pothesis, we  shall  haye  left  out  the  strongest  probabilities 
of  the  case.  It  is  no  answer  to  the  necessity  for  includ- 
ing this  conclusion  to  say  that  there  is  a  power  which 
we  can  not  know,  or  an  Unknowable  Reality  hidden  un- 
der all  changing  manifestations,  among  which  are  those 
of  mind.  A  study  of  those  manifestations  leads  rightly  to 
some  conclusions  respecting  the  Power  which  underlies  all 
manifestations.  It  is  necessary,  therefore,  to  subject  Mr. 
Spencer's  philosophy  of  mind  to  the  further  inquiry.  How 
does  he  account  for  the  moral  sense  ?  How  does  he  explain 
that  part  of  consciousness  which  recognizes  moral  obliga- 
tions— the  recognition  of  moral  law  and  duty  ?  We  may 
easily  dispense  with  the  phrase  "substance  of  the  mind," 
if  we  wish  to  avoid  a  term  of  matter  ;  but  if  mind  is  con- 
stituted by  the  perception  of  feelings  excited  in  the  nervous 
system,  what  is  it  that  perceives  ?  Is  there  a  something 
that  is  reached  by  the  feelings  which  constitute  sensations 
in  the  great  nerve-center,  which  takes  cognizance  of  them, 
which  combines  them  into  portions  of  consciousness,  or  is 
consciousness  nothing  but  a  succession  of  sensations,  and  if 
so,  what  is  "thought"?  And  what  is  that  portion  of 
thought  which  takes  cognizance  of  moral  duty,  and  which 
shows  man  to  be  capable  of  recognizing  and  obeying  or 
breaking  a  moral  law  ?  I  have  somewhere  read  a  suggestion 
that  the  polity  which  is  said  to  have  been  given  to  the  He- 
brew people  on  the  Mount  of  Sinai,  and  which  is  described 
as  ten  statutes  written  on  two  tablets  of  stone,  consisted  of 
five  laws  on  one  tablet  and  five  on  the  other ;  one  set  of 
them  expressing  the  relations  of  the  Hebrews  to  the  Deity, 
and  the  other  being  the  fundamental  laws  of  the  social  life 
which  the  Hebrews  were  commanded  to  lead.  This  division 
is  not  accurate,  because  the  commandments  which  express 
the  relations  of  the  Hebrews  to  the  Deity  are  four  in  num- 


COMMANDS  GIVEN  TO  THE  HEBREWS.         419 

ber,  and  the  commandments  whicli  were  to  constitute  their 
social  law  are  six.  But  that  there  is  a  line  of  demarkation 
between  the  two  kinds  of  laws  is  obvious,  and  how  they 
were  written  on  the  tablets,  or  whether  they  were  written 
at  all,  is  immaterial.  Looking,  then,  first  at  the  social  law, 
whether  there  was  more  or  less  of  the  same  ethical  charac- 
ter in  the  codes  of  other  ancient  peoples,  or  whether  the 
social  law  which  is  said  to  have  been  delivered  to  Moses  and 
by  him  communicated  to  his  nation  stands  as  an  embodi- 
ment of  morality  unequaled  by  anything  that  had  preceded 
it,  it  is  certain  that  it  found  the  Hebrew  people  capable  of 
the  idea  of  law  as  a  divine  command.  It  is  true  that  the 
corner-stone  of  the  whole  superstructure  is  to  be  found  in 
the  fact  that  the  several  commands  which  constituted  this 
social  code — *' Honor  thy  father  and  thy  mother,"  "Thou 
shalt  do  no  murder,"  "Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery," 
"Thou  shalt  not  steal,"  "Thou  shalt  not  bear  false  wit- 
ness against  thy  neighbor,"  "Thou  shalt  not  covet  thy 
neighbor's  house,"  etc. — were  addressed  to  a  people  to  whose 
representatives  the  Almighty  is  supposed  to  have  revealed 
himself  amid  "thunders  and  lightnings,  and  a  thick  cloud 
upon  the  mount,  and  the  voice  of  a  trumpet  exceeding  loud, 
and  all  the  people  that  were  in  the  camp  [below]  trembled." 
It  is  also  true  that  the  first  of  these  awful  annunciations 
was  said  to  have  been,  "I  am  the  Lord  thy  God,  which 
brought  thee  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  out  of  the  house  of 
bondage.  Thou  shalt  have  no  other  gods  before  [or  beside] 
me."*  So  that  the  source  whence  all  the  following  com- 
mands proceeded  was  the  one  and  only  God,  who  is  de- 
scribed as  having  thus  revealed  himself  in  fire  and  cloud 
and  earthquake,  and  thus  to  have  secured  instant  and  im- 
plicit faith  in  what  he  spoke.  But  what  he  is  asserted  to 
have  said  was  addressed  to  human  minds.     This  is  in  one 

*  Revised  version. 


420  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

aspect  the  most  important  fact  in  the  whole  Hebrew  his- 
tory. It  makes  no  difference  whether  Moses  performed  a 
piece  of  jugglery,  or  whether  he  actually  went  within  the 
fire  and  the  cloud,  and  actually  spoke  with  God  and  re- 
ceived his  commands.  The  indisputable  truth  remains  that 
the  individual  minds  of  the  Hebrew  people,  whom  Moses 
had  led  out  of  Egypt,  received  and  obeyed,  as  divine  com- 
mands, an  original  and  unique  moral  code,  because  they 
were  so  constituted  that  they  could  embrace  and  act  upon 
the  idea  of  law  emanating  from  another  than  an  earthly  or 
a  human  source.  What,  then,  was  this  constitution  of  the 
human  mind,  that  could  thus  receive  and  act  upon  a  divine 
command  ;  and  what  is  it  now  ?  It  matters  not,  in  the  view 
in  which  I  ask  this  question,  whether  there  was  any  deceit 
practiced  or  not,  or  whether  there  is  any  practiced  now  in 
respect  to  the  authority  giving  the  command.  What  is  to 
be  accounted  for  is  the  capacity  of  the  human  mind  to  em- 
brace and  accept  the  idea  of  a  moral  law,  be  it  that  of  Moses, 
or  of  Christ,  or  of  Mohammed. 

KosMicos.  I  am  glad  that  you  put  this  matter  of  the 
ten  commandments  hypothetically,  because  otherwise  we 
might  have  been  led  aside  into  an  argument  about  the  au- 
thenticity of  the  narrative.  I  recognize,  however,  the  bear- 
ing of  the  question  which  you  have  put,  and  shall  endeavor 
to  answer  it.  Your  question  implies  that  the  essential  con- 
stitution of  the  human  mind  has  been  the  same  in  all  ages ; 
that  it  was  the  same  in  this  race  of  nomads,  who  had  been, 
they  and  their  fathers  for  ages,  serfs  of  the  Egyptian  kings, 
that  it  is  in  us.  Perhaps  this  assumption  may  be  allowed  ; 
and,  at  all  events,  the  real  question  is,  How  did  the  idea  of 
a  moral  law  originate,  and  what  is  the  sense  of  moral  obli- 
gation ?  Like  all  things  else,  it  is  a  product  of  the  process 
of  evolution.  I  shall  not  argue  this  by  any  elaborate  rea- 
soning, but  will  proceed  to  state  the  grounds  on  which  it 
rests.     I  will  first  give  you  what  I  understand  to  be  Dar- 


DAKWIN'S  ORIGIN  OF  MORALITY.  421 

win's  yiew  of  the  origin  of  the  hahit  of  thinking  and  feel- 
ing, which  we  call  the  moral  sense.  Primeval  man  must 
have  existed  in  a  state  of  barbarism.  When  he  had  become 
developed  out  of  some  pre-existing  animal,  he  was  a  mere 
savage,  distinguishable  from  his  predecessors  only  by  the 
possession  of  some  superior  degree  of  mental  power.  Sav- 
ages, like  some  other  animals,  form  themselves  into  tribes 
or  bands.  Certain  social  instincts  arise,  out  of  which  spring 
what  are  regarded  as  virtues.  Individuals  of  the  tribe  begin 
to  desire  the  sympathy  and  approbation  of  their  fellows. 
They  perceive  that  certain  actions,  such  as  protection  of 
other  and  weaker  individuals  against  danger,  gain  for  them 
the  sympathy  and  approbation  of  the  tribe.  There  are  thus 
formed  some  ideas  of  the  common  advantage  to  the  tribe  of 
certain  actions,  and  of  the  common  disadvantage  of  the  op- 
posite actions.  Man  is  eminently  a  social  animal,  and  this 
desire  for  the  sympathy  and  approbation  of  his  tribe,  and 
this  fear  of  their  disapprobation,  is  so  strong  that  the  indi- 
vidual savage  is  led  to  perceive  that  the  common  good  of 
the  tribe  is  the  object  at  which  he  must  aim  to  conform. 
The  first  social  instincts,  therefore,  are  those  which  per- 
ceive the  relations  between  certain  kinds  of  conduct  and  the 
common  good  of  the  tribe  ;  and  out  of  these  relations,  with 
the  aid  of  increasing  intellectual  powers,  is  developed  the 
golden  rule,  "As  ye  would  that  men  should  do  to  you,  do 
ye  to  them  likewise,"  which  lies  at  the  foundation  of  mo- 
rality. These  social  instincts,  thus  leading  at  last  to  the 
great  rule  of  social  morality,  are  developed  very  slowly. 
They  are  at  first  confined  to  the  benefit  of  the  same  tribe, 
and  they  have  no  force  in  the  relations  of  that  tribe  to  the 
members  of  any  other.  To  a  savage  it  is  a  highly  meri- 
torious action  to  save  the  life  of  another  member  of  his 
own  tribe,  and  if  he  loses  his  own  life  in  the  effort  it  is  so 
much  the  more  meritorious.  But  he  does  not  extend  this 
idea  of  doing  a  good  action  to  the  members  of  a  different 


422  *      CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

tribe,  and,  whether  his  own  tribe  is  or  is  not  at  war  with  the 
other  tribe,  he  and  his  own  community  will  think  it  no 
harm  if  he  murders  a  member  of  that  other  tribe.  But  as 
the  approach  to  ciyilization  goes  on — as  man  advances  in 
intellectual  power,  and  can  trace  the  more  remote  conse- 
quences of  his  actions,  and  as  he  rejects  baneful  customs 
and  superstitions,  he  begins  to  regard  more  and  more  not 
only  the  welfare  but  the  happiness  of  his  fellow-men. 
Habit,  resulting  from  beneficial  experiences,  instruction 
and  example,  renders  his  sympathies  more  tender  and 
widely  diffused,  until  at  last  he  extends  them  to  men  of 
all  races,  to  the  imbecile,  maimed,  and  other  useless  mem- 
bers of  society,  and  to  the  inferior  animals.  Thus  the 
standard  of  morality  rises  higher  and  higher ;  but  its  origin 
is  in  the  social  instincts,  which  spring  out  of  the  love  of 
approbation  and  the  fear  of  disapprobation.* 

But  morality  comprehends  also  the  self-regarding  vir- 
tues, those  which  directly  affect  the  individual,  and  which 
affect  society  but  remotely  and  incidentally.  How  did  the 
idea  of  these  originate  ?  There  is  a  very  wide  difference 
between  the  morality  of  savages,  in  respect  to  the  self- 
regarding  virtues,  and  the  morality  of  civilized  nations. 
Among  the  former,  the  greatest  intemperance,  utter  licen- 
tiousness, and  unnatural  crimes  are  very  common.  But  as 
soon  as  marriage  was  introduced,  whether  monogamous  or 
polygamous,  jealousy  led  to  the  inculcation  of  female  vir- 
tue ;  and  this,  being  honored,  spread  to  the  unmarried 
females.  Chastity,  the  hatred  of  indecency,  temperance, 
and  many  other  self-regarding  virtues,  originating  first  in 
the  social  instincts,  have  come  to  be  highly  prized  by  civil- 
ized nations  as  affecting,  first,  the  welfare  of  the  commu- 
nity, and,  secondly,  the  welfare  of  the  individual.  This  was 
the  origin  of  the  so-called  "moral  sense."    It  rejects  the 

*  Darwin,  "  Descent  of  Man,"  Part  I,  chap.  iv. 


SPENCER'S  IDEA  OF  THE  MORAL  SENSE.      423 

intuitive  theory  of  morality,  and  bases  its  origin  on  the  in- 
creasing perception  of  the  advantage  of  certain  conduct  to 
the  community  and  the  individual.* 

SoPHEKEUS.  And  in  this  origin  of  the  social  and  the 
self-regarding  virtues,  which  I  understand  you  to  say  is  the 
theory  of  Darwin,  is  the  idea  of  a  divine  command  to  prac- 
tice certain  things,  and  to  avoid  doing  certain  other  things, 
left  out  ? 

KosMicos.  The  idea  of  a  divine  command,  as  the  source 
of  morality,  is  not  necessary  to  the  explanation  of  the  mode 
in  which  the  social  or  the  self-regarding  virtues  were  grad- 
ually developed.  In  the  progress  from  barbarism  to  civili- 
zation, what  is  called  the  moral  sense  has  been  slowly  devel- 
oped as  an  increasing  perception  of  what  is  beneficial,  and 
this  has  become  an  inherited  faculty.  We  thus  have  a  sure 
scientific  basis  for  the  moral  intuitions  which  we  do  not  in- 
dividually stay  to  analyze  when  we  are  called  upon  to  deter- 
mine the  morality  or  the  immorality  of  certain  actions. 
The  supposed  divine  command  is  something  that  is  aside 
from  the  process  by  which  the  idea  of  morality  or  immoral- 
ity became  developed. 

SoPHEREUS.  And  is  this  also  Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy 
of  the  moral  sense  ? 

KosMicos.  Let  me  read  you  what  Spencer  says  :  "I 
believe  that  the  experience  of  utility,  organized  and  con- 
solidated through  all  past  generations  of  the  human  race, 
has  been  producing  corresponding  modifications  which,  by 
continued  transmission  and  accumulation,  have  become  in 
us  certain  faculties  of  moral  intuition — certain  emotions 
responding  to  right  and  wrong  conduct,  which  have  no 
apparent  basis  in  the  individual  experiences  of  utility."  f 
I  have  emphasized  certain  words  in  this  passage  in  order  to 

*  "  Descent  of  Man,"  Part  I,  chap.  iv. 

f  Quoted  in  Darwin's  "  Descent  of  Man,"  p.  123. 


424:  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

make  its  meaning  distinct.  Mr.  Spencer's  theory  is  that 
we  have  certain  faculties  of  moral  intuition,  which  have 
become  such  by  transmission  and  accumulation  ;  that  the 
original  ideas  of  right  and  wrong  sprang  from  perceptions 
of  utility ;  and  that  when  to  the  individual  the  question  of 
a  good  or  a  bad  action  in  others  or  himself  is  now  pre- 
sented, he  feels  an  emotion  which  responds  to  right  or 
wrong  conduct,  and  feels  it  in  the  faculty  which  he  has 
inherited  from  ancestors,  without  referring  it  to  his  indi- 
vidual experience  of  the  utility  or  inutility  of  certain  con- 
duct. 

Now,  in  regard  to  the  divine  command  as  the  origin 
of  our  ideas  of  right  and  wrong,  if  you  turn  to  Mr.  Spen- 
cer's '^  Principles  of  Sociology,"  you  will  find  an  immense 
collection  of  evidence  which  shows  the  genesis  of  deities  of 
all  kinds.  Beginning  with  the  ideas  formed  by  the  primi- 
tive men  of  souls,  ghosts,  spirits,  and  demons,  the  ideas  of 
another  life  and  of  another  world,  there  came  about  the 
ideas  of  supernatural  beings,  aided  in  their  development  by 
ancestor-worship,  idol-worship,  fetich-worship,  animal-wor- 
ship, plant-worship,  and  nature-worship.  Hence  came  the 
ideas  of  deities  of  various  kinds,  one  class  of  which  is  tl^at 
of  the  human  personality  greatly  disguised,  and  the  other 
is  the  class  which  has  arisen  by  simple  idealization  and  ex- 
pansion of  the  human  personality.  The  last  class,  although 
always  coexisting  with  the  other,  at  length  becomes  pre- 
dominant, and  finally  there  is  developed  the  idea  of  one 
chief  or  supreme  deity.  Having  traced  the  origin  of  this 
idea  of  a  supreme  deity,  Mr.  Spencer  puts  and  answers 
this  question:  "While  among  all  races  and  all  regions, 
from  the  earliest  times  down  to  the  most  recent,  the  con- 
ceptions of  deities  have  been  naturally  evolved  in  the  way 
shown,  must  we  conclude  that  a  small  clan  of  the  Semitic 
race  had  given  to  it,  supernaturally,  a  conception  which, 
though  superficially  like  the  rest,  was  in  substance  abso- 


IDEA  OF  THE  HEBREW  GOD.  425 

lutely  unlike  them  ? "  *  He  then  proceeds  to  show  that 
the  Hebrew  Jehoyah,  or  God,  was  a  conception  that  had 
a  kindred  genesis  with  all  the  other  conceptions  of  a  deity 
or  deities.  "  Here,"  he  says,  "  pursuing  the  methods  of  sci- 
ence, and  disregarding  foregone  conclusions,  we  must  deal 
with  the  Hebrew  conception  in  the  same  manner  as  with 
all  the  others."  Dealing  with  it  by  the  scientific  method, 
he  shows  that  behind  the  supernatural  being  of  the  order 
of  the  Hebrew  God,  as  behind  the  supernatural  beings  of 
all  other  orders,  there  has  in  every  case  been  a  human  per- 
sonality. Thus,  taking  the  narrative  as  it  has  come  down 
to  us  of  God's  dealing  with  Abraham,  he  shows  that  what 
Abraham  thought,  or  is  described  as  thinking  by  those 
who  preserved  the  tradition,  was  of  a  terrestrial  ruler  who 
could,  like  any  other  earthly  potentate,  make  a  covenant 
with  him  about  land  or  anything  else,  or  that  he  was  the 
maker  of  all  things,  and  that  Abraham  believed  the  earth 
and  the  heavens  were  produced  by  one  who  eats  and  drinks, 
and  feels  weary  after  walking.  Upon  either  idea,  Abra- 
ham's conception  of  a  Deity  remains  identical  with  that 
of  his  modern  Semitic  representative,  and  with  that  of  the 
uncivilized  in  general.  But  the  ideas  of  Deity  entertained 
by  cultivated  people,  instead  of  being  innate,  arise  only 
at  a  comparatively  advanced  stage,  as  results  of  accumu- 
lated knowledge,  greater  intellectual  grasp,  and  higher 
sentiment,  f 

To  return  now  to  the  supposed  divine  command  as  the 
origin  of  morality,  it  is  obvious  that  the  conception  of  the 
being  who  has  uttered  the  command  makes  the  natui'e  of 
the  command  partake  of  the  attributes  ascribed  to  that  be- 
ing. Accordingly,  the  grossest  superstitions,  the  most  re- 
volting practices,  the  most  immoral  actions,  have  found 

*  "  Principles  of  Sociology,"  1,  p.  433,  §  202. 
f  Ibid.,  chap,  xxv,  p.  414  et  seq. 


426  CEEATION  OE  EVOLUTION? 

their  sanction  in  -what  the  particular  deity  who  is  believed  in 
is  supposed  to  have  inculcated  or  required.  I  do  not  need 
to  enumerate  to  you  the  proofs  of  this,  or  to  tell  you  that 
the  Hebrew  God  is  no  exception  to  it.  One  illustration  of 
it,  however,  is  worth  repeating.  Speaking  of  the  ceremony 
by  which  the  covenant  between  God  and  Abraham  is  said 
to  have  been  established,  Mr.  Spencer  says  :  "Abraham  and 
each  of  his  male  descendants,  and  each  of  his  slaves,  is  cir- 
cumcised. The  mark  of  the  covenant,  observe,  is  to  be 
borne  not  only  by  Abraham  and  those  of  his  blood,  but  also 
by  those  of  other  blood  whom  he  has  bought.  The  mark 
is  a  strange  one,  and  the  extension  of  it  is  a  strange  one,  if 
we  assume  it  to  be  imposed  by  the  Creator  of  the  universe, 
as  a  mark  on  a  favored  man  and  his  descendants  ;  and  on 
this  assumption  it  is  no  less  strange  that  the  one  transgres- 
sion for  which  every  ^soul  shall  be  cut  oS.'  is,  not  any 
crime,  but  the  neglect  of  this  rite.  But  such  a  ceremony 
insisted  on  by  a  living  potentate,  under  penalty  of  death,  is 
not  strange,  for,  as  we  shall  hereafter  see,  circumcision  is 
one  of  various  mutilations  imposed  as  marks  on  subject  per- 
sons by  terrestrial  superiors. "  * 

So  that  the  Hebrew  God  who  made  the  covenant  with 
Abraham  was  not,  in  Abraham's  own  conception,  the  First 
Cause  of  all  things,  or  a  supernatural  being,  but  he  was  a 
powerful  human  ruler,  making  an  agreement  with  a  shep- 
herd chief.  In  all  religions,  the  things  required  or  com- 
manded by  the  supposed  deified  person  have  been  marked 
by  the  characteristics  of  human  rulers  ;  and  as  a  source  of 
morality,  or  as  a  standard  of  morality,  the  requirements  or 
commands  of  the  deified  person,  however  they  are  supposed 
to  have  been  communicated,  fail  to  answer  the  indispensa- 
ble condition  of  a  fixed  and  innate  system  of  morality,  which 
is  that  it  must  have  proceeded  from  the  Creator  of  the 

*  "  Principles  of  Sociology,"  i,  p.  186. 


SPEJ^CER'S  NATURAL  ETHICS.  427 

uniyerse,  and  not  from  a  being  who  partakes  of  human  pas- 
sions, infirmities,  and  desires,  and  is  merely  a  deified  human 
potentate. 

Pass,  now,  to  Mr.  Spencer's  "  Principles  of  Morality  "  ; 
and  although  but  one  volume  of  this  work  has  been  as  yet 
published,  we  may  see  that  he  is  entirely  consistent  with 
what  he  has  said  in  his  "  Sociology"  and  his  other  writings.* 
He  does  not  leave  us  in  any  doubt  as  to  his  theory  of  morals. 
It  appears,  from  the  preface  to  his  *'  Data  of  Ethics,"  that 
he  has  been  compelled  by  ill-health  to  deviate  from  the 
plan  which  he  had  mapped  out  for  himself,  and  to  pub- 
lish one  volume  of  his  "  Principles  of  Morality "  before 
completing  his  "  Principles  of  Sociology."  But  while  we 
have  reason  for  his  sake  and  for  the  sake  of  the  world  to 
regret  this,  we  can  easily  understand  his  system  of  morality. 
He  means  to  rest  the  rules  of  right  conduct  on  a  scientific 
basis,  and  he  shows  that  this  is  a  pressing  need.  In  his 
preface,  he  says  : 

I  am  the  more  anxious  to  indicate  in  outline,  if  I  can  not  com- 
plete, this  final  proof,  because  the  establishment  of  rules  of  right 
conduct  on  a  scientific  basis  is  a  pressing  need.  Now  that  moral 
injunctions  are  losing  the  authority  given  by  their  supposed  sacred 
origin,  the  secularization  of  morals  is  becoming  imperative.  Few 
things  can  happen  more  disastrous  than  the  decay  and  death  of  a 
regulative  system  no  longer  fit,  before  another  and  fitter  regulative 
system  has  grown  up  to  replace  it.  Most  of  those  who  reject  the 
current  creed  appear  to  assume  that  the  controlling  agency  fur- 
nished by  it  may  be  safely  thrown  aside,  and  the  vacancy  left  xmfiUed 
by  any  other  controlling  agency.  Meanwhile,  those  who  defend  the 
current  creed  allege  that,  in  the  absence  of  the  guidance  it  yields,  no 
guidance  can  exist ;  divine  commandments  they  think  the  only  pos- 
sible guides.    Thus,  between  these  extreme  opponents  there  is  a  cer- 


*  "  Principles  of  Morality,"  vol.  i.      I.  "  The  Data  of  Ethics."      By 
Herbert  Spencer.    New  York  :  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  1884. 


428  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

tain  community.  The  one  holds  that  the  gap  left  by  disappearance 
of  the  code  of  supernatural  ethics  need  not  be  filled  by  a  code  of 
natural  ethics;  and  the  other  holds  that  it  can  not  be  so  filled. 
Both  contemplate  a  vacuum,  which  the  one  wishes  and  the  other 
fears.  As  the  change  which  promises  or  threatens  to  bring  about 
this  state,  desired  or  dreaded,  is  rapidly  progressing,  those  who  be- 
lieve that  the  vacuum  can  be  filled  are  called  upon  to  do  something 
in  pursuance  of  their  belief. 

The  code  of  natural  ethics  which  Mr.  Spencer  pro- 
pounds, and  which  is  a  product  of  the  process  of  evolution, 
may  be  summarized  as  follows  :  Conduct  is  an  aggregate  of 
actions  which  are  not  purposeless,  but  which  include  all 
acts  that  are  adjusted  to  ends,  from  the  simplest  to  the 
most  complex.  The  division  or  aspect  of  conduct  with 
which  ethics  deals,  the  behavior  we  call  good  or  bad,  is  a 
part  of  an  organic  whole  ;  but,  although  inextricably  bound 
up  with  acts  which  are  neither  good  nor  bad,  it  is  distin- 
guishable as  comprehending  those  acts  with  which  morality 
is  concerned.  The  evolution  of  conduct,  from  the  sim- 
plest and  most  indifferent  actions  up  to  those  on  which 
ethical  judgments  are  passed,  is  what  Mr.  Spencer  means 
by  the  scientific  method  of  investigating  the  origin  of  mo- 
rality. We  must  begin  with  the  conduct  of  all  living  creat- 
ures, because  the  complete  comprehension  of  conduct  is  not 
to  be  obtained  by  contemplating  the  conduct  of  human  be- 
ings only.  "The  conduct  of  the  higher  animals  as  com- 
pared with  that  of  man,  and  the  conduct  of  the  lower  ani- 
mals as  compared  with  that  of  the  higher,  mainly  differ  in 
this,  that  the  adjustments  of  acts  to  ends  are  relatively  sim- 
ple and  relatively  incomplete.  And  as  in  other  cases,  so 
in  this  case,  we  must  interpret  the  more  developed  by 
the  less  developed.  Just  as,  fully  to  understand  the  part 
of  conduct  which  ethics  deals  with,  we  must  study  hu- 
man conduct  as  a  whole,  so,  fully  to  understand  human 
conduct  as  a  whole,  we  must  study  it  as  a  part  of  that 


SPENCER'S  THEOEY  OF  CONDUCT.  429 

larger  whole  constituted  by  the  conduct  of  animate  beings 
in  general."* 

Begin,  for  example,  with  an  infusorium  swimming  about 
at  random,  determined  in  its  course  not  by  an  object  which 
it  perceives  and  which  is  to  be  pursued  or  escaped,  but  ap- 
parently by  varying  stimuli  in  its  medium,  the  water.  Its 
acts,  unadjusted  in  any  appreciable  way  to  ends,  lead  it 
now  into  contact  with  some  nutritive  substance  which  it 
absorbs,  and  now  into  the  neighborhood  of  some  creature 
by  which  it  is  swallowed  and  digested.  Pass  on  to  another 
aquatic  creature,  which,  although  of  a  low  type,  is  much 
higher  than  the  infusorium,  such  as  a  rotifer.  With  larger 
size,  more  developed  structures,  and  greater  power  of  com- 
bining functions,  there  comes  an  advance  in  conduct.  It 
preserves  itseK  for  a  longer  period  by  better  adjusting  its 
own  actions,  so  that  it  is  less  dependent  on  the  actions  go- 
ing on  around.  Again,  compare  a  low  mollusk,  such  as  a 
floating  ascidian,  with  a  high  mollusk,  such  as  a  cephalo- 
pod,  and  it  is  apparent  how  greater  organic  evolution  is 
accompanied  by  more  evolved  conduct.  And  if  you  pass 
then  to  the  vertebrate  animals,  you  see  how,  along  with 
advance  in  structure  and  functions,  there  is  evolved  an  ad- 
vance in  conduct,  until  at  length,  when  you  reach  the  do- 
ings of  the  highest  of  mammals,  mankind,  you  not  only 
find  that  the  adjustments  of  acts  to  ends  are  both  more  nu- 
merous and  better  than  among  the  lower  mammals,  but  you 
find  the  same  thing  on  comparing  the  doings  of  the  higher 
races  of  men  with  those  of  the  lower  races.  There  is  a 
greater  completeness  of  achievement  by  civilized  men  than 
by  savages,  and  there  is  also  an  achievement  of  relatively 
numerous  minor  ends  subserving  major  ends. 

Recollecting,  then,  what  conduct  is — namely,  the  ad- 

*  "  The  Data  of  Ethics,"  pp.  6,  7,  by  Herbert  Spencer.    New  York :  D. 
Appleton  &  Co.,  1884. 


430  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

justment  of  acts  to  ends — and  observing  how  this  adjust- 
ment becomes  more  and  more  complete  as  the  organism 
becomes  more  developed,  we  have  to  note  the  order  of  the 
ends  to  which  the  acts  are  adjusted.  The  first  end,  the 
first  stage  of  evolving  conduct,  is  the  further  prolongation 
of  life.  The  iiext  is  that  adjustment  of  acts  to  ends  which 
furthers  an  increased  amount  of  life.  Thus  far  the  ends 
are  complete  individual  life.  Then  come  those  adjust- 
ments which  have  for  their  final  purpose  the  life  of  the 
species.  Then  there  is  a  third  kind  of  conduct,  which 
results  from  the  fact  that  the  multitudinous  creatures 
which  fill  the  earth  can  not  live  wholly  apart  from  one 
another,  but  are  more  or  less  in  presence  of  one  another, 
are  interfered  with  by  one  another.  No  one  species  can  so 
act  as  to  secure  the  greatest  amount  of  life  to  its  individu- 
als and  the  preservation  of  the  species — can  make  a  success- 
ful adjustment  of  its  acts  to  these  ends — without  interfer- 
ing with  the  corresponding  adjustments  by  other  creatures 
of  their  acts  to  their  ends.  That  some  may  live,  others 
must  die.  Finally,  when  we  contemplate  those  adjust- 
ments of  acts  to  ends  which  miss  completeness,  because  they 
can  not  be  made  by  one  creature  without  other  creatures 
being  prevented  from  making  them,  we  reach  the  thought 
of  adjustments  such  that  each  creature  may  make  them 
without  preventing  them  from  being  made  by  other  creat- 
ures. Let  me  now  quote  Mr.  Spencer's  concrete  illustra- 
tions of  these  abstract  statements  : 

"  Recognizing  men  as  the  beings  whose  conduct  is  most 
evolved,  let  us  ask  under  what  conditions  their  conduct,  in 
all  three  aspects  of  its  evolution,  reaches  its  limit.  Clearly 
while  the  lives  led  are  entirely  predatory,  as  those  of  sav- 
ages, the  adjustments  of  acts  to  ends  fall  short  of  this. high- 
est form  of  conduct  in  every  way.  Individual  life,  ill  car- 
ried on  from  hour  to  hour,  is  prematurely  cut  short ;  the 
fostering  of  offspring  often  fails,  and  is  incomplete  when  it 


.     ETHICAL  CHARACTER  OF  ACTIONS.  431 

does  not  fail ;  and  in  so  far  as  the  ends  of  self-maintenance 
and  race-maintenance  are  met,  they  are  met  by  destruction 
of  other  beings,  of  different  kind,  or  of  like  kind.  In 
social  groups  formed  by  compounding  and  recompounding 
primitive  hordes,  conduct  remains  imperfectly  evolved  in 
proportion  as  there  continue  antagonisms  between  the 
groups  and  antagonisms  between  members  of  the  same 
group — two  traits  necessarily  associated ;  since  the  nature 
which  prompts  international  aggression  prompts  aggression 
of  individuals  on  one  another.  Hence,  the  limit  of  evolu- 
tion can  be  reached  by  conduct  only  in  permanently  peace- 
ful societies.  That  perfect  adjustment  of  acts  to  ends  in 
maintaining  individual  life  and  rearing  new  individuals, 
which  is  effected  by  each  without  hindering  others  from 
effecting  like  perfect  adjustments,  is,  in  its  very  definition, 
shown  to  constitute  a  kind  of  conduct  that  can  be  approached 
only  as  war  decreases  and  dies  out. 

''A  gap  in  this  outline  must  now  be  filled  up.  There 
remains  a  further  advance  not  yet  even  hinted.  For  beyond 
so  behaving  that  each  achieves  his  ends  without  preventing 
others  from  achieving  their  ends,  the  members  of  a  society 
may  give  mutual  help  in  the  achievement  of  ends.  And  if, 
either  indirectly  by  industrial  co-operation,  or  directly  by 
volunteered  aid,  fellow-citizens  can  make  easier  for  one 
another  the  adjustments  of  acts  to  ends,  then  their  conduct 
assumes  a  still  higher  phase  of  evolution  ;  since  whatever 
facilitates  the  making  of  adjustments  by  each,  increases  the 
totality  of  the  adjustments  made,  and  serves  to  render  the 
lives  of  all  more  complete." 

In  the  outline  which  I  have  now  given  you  of  the  evolu- 
tion of  conduct,  you  will  perceive  the  foundation  of  Spencer's 
system  of  ethics.  Actions  begin  to  assume  an  ethical  char- 
acter— conduct  becomes  good  or  bad — when  the  acts  tend  to 
promote  or  to  prevent  the  general  well-being  of  the  commu- 
nity.   But  how  is  the  perception  or  recognition  of  this  qual- 


432  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

ity  in  an  action  reached  ?  "What  is  the  determining  reason 
for  considering  an  action  good  or  bad  ?  Obviously,  conduct 
is  considered  by  us  as  good  or  bad  according  as  its  aggregate 
results  to  self,  or  others,  or  both,  are  pleasurable  or  painful. 
Mr.  Spencer  shows  that  every  other  proposed  standard  of 
conduct  derives  its  authority  from  this  standard:  **No 
school  can  avoid  taking  for  the  ultimate  moral  aim  a  desir- 
able state  of  feeling  called  by  whatever  name — gratification, 
enjoyment,  happiness.  Pleasure  somewhere,  at  some  time, 
to  some  being  or  beings,  is  an  inexpugnable  element  of  the 
conception.  It  is  as  much  a  necessary  form  of  moral  in- 
tuition as  space  is  a  necessary  form  of  intellectual  intui- 
tion."* 

On  this  fundamental  basis,  Mr.  Spencer  rests  his  system 
of  absolute  ethics  and  relative  ethics.  Kelative  ethics  are 
those  by  which,  allowing  for  the  friction  of  an  incomplete 
life  and  the  imperfections  of  existing  natures,  we  may  ascer- 
tain with  approximate  correctness  what  is  the  relatively 
right.  This  is  often  exceedingly  difficult,  because  two  cases 
are  rarely  the  same  in  all  their  circumstances.  But  abso- 
lute ethics  are  the  ideal  ethical  truths,  expressing  the  abso- 
lutely right.  Such  a  system  of  ideal  ethical  truths,  which 
must  have  precedence  over  relative  ethics,  is  reached  only 
when  there  has  been,  in  conformity  with  the  laws  of  evolu- 
tion in  general,  and  in  conformity  with  the  laws  of  organi- 
zation in  particular,  an  adaptation  of  humanity  to  the  social 
state,  changing  it  in  the  direction  of  an  ideal  congruity. 
But,  as  in  relative  ethics,  the  production  of  happiness  or 
pleasure  is  the  aim,  however  imperfectly  accomplished,  so 
in  the  ideal  state  the  aim  is  the  same,  the  difference  being 
that  in  the  latter  the  accomplishment  of  happiness  or  pleas- 
ure and  the  exclusion  or  prevention  of  pain  are  complete. 

*  "The  Data  of  Ethics,"  pp.  45,  46,  by  Herbert  Spencer.  New  York : 
D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  1884. 


SPENCER'S  NEGATIONS.  433 

SoPHEKEUS.  And  do  I  understand  you  that  in  this  sys- 
tem of  ethics  the  idea  of  a  moral  law  proceeding  from  and 
consisting  of  the  command  of  a  Supreme  Lawgiver  is  left 
out? 

KosMicos.  Certainly  it  is.  Did  I  not  just  now  read  to 
you  from  Mr.  Spencer's  preface  his  complete  rejection  of 
the  supposed  sacred  origin  of  moral  injunctions,  and  what 
he  says  of  the  necessity  for  the  secularization  of  morals  to 
take  the  place  of  that  system  which  is  losing  its  authority  ? 

SoPHEREUS.  And  this  philosopher  is  the  same  writer 
who  negatives  the  idea  of  any  creation  of  organic  life,  and 
who  also  negatives  the  idea  that  the  human  mind  is  an  ex- 
istence of  a  spiritual  nature,  owing  its  existence  to  a  Cre- 
ator ? 

Kosiiicos.  Undoubtedly ;  we  have  gone  over  all  that 
ground. 

SoPHEREUS.  And  he  is  the  same  philosopher  who  de- 
nies the  existence  of  a  Supreme  Being,  Creator,  and  Gov- 
ernor of  the  universe  ? 

KosMicos.  Perhaps  you  may  call  it  denial,  although 
what  he  maintains  is  that  we  know,  and  can  know,  nothing 
on  the  subject  of  a  personal  God. 

SoPHEREUS.  Very  well.  I  will  reflect  upon  all  this 
until  we  meet  again. 


CHAPTER  XIL 

Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy  as  a  whole — His  psychology,  and  his  system  of 
ethics — The  sacred  origin  of  moral  injunctions,  and  the  secularization 
of  morals. 

A  CERTAii?"  honesty  and  directness  of  mind  prevent 
Sophereus  from  being  bewildered  by  tbe  Spencerian  philoso- 
phy. Before  his  next  meeting  with  the  scientist,  he  has 
reviewed  the  main  features  of  this  philosophy  as  developed 
in  Mr.  Spencer's  published  works  ;  and  he  has  taken  notice 
of  the  warning  which  Mr.  Spencer  has  given  to  his  readers 
in  the  preface  to  his  "Data  of  Ethics,"  that  "there  will 
probably  be  singled  out  for  reprobation  from  this  volume, 
doctrines  which,  taken  by  themselves,  may  readily  be  made 
to  seem  utterly  wrong."  There  is  not  much  likelihood  that 
Sophereus  will  be  able,  if  he  is  willing,  to  avail  himself  of 
this  "opportunity  for  misrepresentation"  in  a  discussion 
with  such  a  champion  of  Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy  as  the 
scientist  who  explains  and  defends  it,  especially  as  they 
have  the  works  before  them  to  refer  to.  Being  thus  respect- 
ively equipped  for  the  discussion,  the  conference  between 
them  proceeds  : 

Sophereus.  Before  I  give  you  my  convictions  respecting 
Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy  as  a  whole,  I  wish  to  say  some- 
thing about  the  passage  which  you  read  from  the  preface 
to  his  "  Data  of  Ethics,"  because  it  is  the  key  to  his  ethical 
system.  In  the  first  place,  to  what  does  he  refer  when  he 
speaks  of  "  the  current  creed"  ?  "When  I  undertake  to  in- 
vestigate a  system  of  morality,  the  only  "  creed  "  that  I  care 


"THE  CUREENT  CREED."  435 

about — ^the  only  one  that  is  of  any  importance — is  that 
which  accepts,  as  a  matter  of  belief,  the  existence  of  the 
Creator  and  Supreme  Governor  of  the  universe,  from  whose 
infinite  will  and  purposes  have  proceeded  certain  moral  as 
well  as  physical  laws.  This,  I  take  it,  is  the  "creed"  of 
which  Mr.  Spencer  speaks ;  the  one  which  assigns  moral 
injunctions  to  the  will  of  a  Supreme  Lawgiver  as  "  their 
supposed  sacred  origin.''  It  is  to  this  creed  that  he  opposes 
his  "secularization  of  morals,"  which  must  take  the  place 
of  their  supposed  sacred  origin,  because  the  authority  of 
the  latter  is  rapidly  dying  out  of  the  world.  It  is  this 
"creed"  which  is  rejected  by  those  who  "assume  that  the 
controlling  agency  furnished  by  it  may  be  safely  thrown 
aside,  and  the  vacancy  left  unfilled  by  any  other  agency." 

Undoubtedly  there  are  and  always  have  been  numerous 
persons  who  appear  practically  to  think  that  the  sacred 
origin  of  morality  can  be  safely  rejected,  and  that  the  va- 
cancy may  be  left  unfilled  by  any  other  restraining  agency. 
The  deliberate  and  willful  murderer,  the  burglar,  the  adult- 
erer, and  many  of  the  other  criminal  classes,  not  only  ap- 
pear to  reject  "  the  current  creed,"  but  they  would  be  very 
glad  to  have  it  assumed  that  there  is  no  other  restraining 
agency  to  take  its  place.  So,  too,  there  are  persons  who 
break  no  moral  law,  whose  lives  are  pure,  but  who,  having 
theoretically  persuaded  themselves  that  there  is  no  sacred 
origin  of  moral  injunctions,  omit  to  provide,  for  themselves 
or  others,  any  other  controlling  agency  to  fill  the  vacuum. 
But  this  latter  class  is  not  very  numerous  ;  and  if,  without 
meaning  any  offense  to  them,  their  number  is  added  to  that 
of  the  criminal  classes,  to  make  up  the  aggregate  of  those 
who  reject  "the  current  creed,"  we  have  not  a  very  large 
body  compared  with  the  whole  body  of  persons  in  civilized 
communities  who  adhere  to  **  the  current  creed,"  who  live 
by  it,  and  who  think  that  others  should  live  by  it  too,  as 
the  ultimate  foundation  of  those  social  laws  which  take 
20 


436  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

cognizance  of  men's  conduct  toward  one  another.  So  fchat 
I  do  not  quite  understand  the  assertion  that  ''moral  in- 
junctions are  losing  the  authority  given  by  their  supposed 
sacred  origin  "  ;  connected  as  it  is  with  the  other  assertion 
that  society  is  "  rapidly  progressing  "  to  that  yacuum  which 
is  to  follow  the  complete  rejection  of  the  one  guide  without 
the  substitution  of  another  in  its  place.  I  am  quite  aware 
that  there  has  been  of  late  years  an  increasing  amount  of 
what  is  called  infidelity,  or  unbelief,  or  atheism.  But  I 
am  quite  sure  that  there  has  not  been  a  general  theoretical 
or  practical  rejection  of  so  much  of  the  religious  creed  of 
mankind  as  assigns  to  the  will  of  a  supreme  and  super- 
natural lawgiver  certain  moral  injunctions.  If  we  confine 
our  view  to  Christendom  alone,  it  is  certain  that  the  growth, 
activity,  and  influence  of  the  various  religious  bodies  are  not 
materially  checked,  and  that  religious  beliefs  are  not  by  any 
means  losing  their  hold  upon  great  multitudes  of  people. 
If  we  survey  the  regions  where  the  Mohammedan  faith  pre- 
vails, the  same  general  result  is  found,  whatever  Christians 
may  think  of  the  beliefs  or  practices  of  that  vast  body  of 
the  human  race.  And,  even  when  we  penetrate  among  the 
races  which  are  less  civilized,  we  find  very  few  races  or 
tribes  in  which  there  does  not  prevail  some  idea  of  some 
kind  of  command  proceeding  from  some  deity  or  other, 
whatever  we  may  think  of  the  character  of  that  deity  or  of 
the  nature  of  the  command. 

But  I  presume  that  Mr.  Spencer  meant  to  confine  his 
assertion  of  the  necessity  for  a  secularization  of  morals,  and 
his  assumption  that  their  sacred  origin  is  rapidly  passing 
away  from  men's  beliefs,  to  the  state  of  society  as  it  exists 
now  in  Western  civilization ;  and  my  observation  of  this 
portion  of  the  world  is,  that  those  who  reject  what  I  pre- 
sume he  means  by  "the  current  creed"  are,  first,  a  class 
of  theorizers  ;  and,  secondly,  the  criminal  classes  ;  and  that 
the  aggregate  of  the  two  is  not,  after  all,  so  formidable  that 


BASIS  OF  LEGISLATION^.  437 

we  ought  to  conclude  that  the  regulative  system  of  the 
sacred  origin  of  moral  injunctions  is  "no  longer  fit"  for 
any  practical  purpose.  I  do  not,  therefore,  recognize  what 
he  considers  the  supreme  practical  necessity  for  "the  secu- 
larization of  morals  "  to  take  the  place  of  a  system  which 
is  worn  out. 

KosMicos.  You  have  left  out  of  the  case  a  very  impor- 
tant element.  Mr.  Spencer  antagonizes  those  who  reject 
the  current  creed  against  those  who  defend  it.  The  for- 
mer, while  they  reject  the  current  creed,  do  not  recognize 
the  necessity  for  any  other  controlling  agency.  The  latter, 
while  they  defend  the  current  creed,  maintain  that  noth- 
ing can  take  its  place  as  a  regulating  agency.  Between 
them  they  create  a  vacuum,  which  one  class  wishes  for 
and  the  other  fears.  This  is  the  vacuum  which  he  says 
can  be  and  must  be  filled  by  the  secularization  of  morals. 
It  is  a  vacuum  in  philosophical  speculation  about  the  origin 
of  morality,  and,  when  the  conclusion  is  reached,  it  becomes 
a  practical  and  pressing  question  how  it  is  to  be  carried  out. 

SoPHEREUS.  Precisely ;  and,  when  the  conclusion  is 
reached,  it  is  to  be  carried  out  in  legislation  and  govern- 
ment, or  else  the  conduct  of  men  toward  one  another  in 
society  is  not  to  be  regulated  by  public  authority  at  all,  but 
is  to  be  left  to  each  man's  perception  of  what  will  produce 
the  greatest  amount  of  pleasure  and  happiness,  or  the  least 
amount  of  pain  and  misery.  Now,  it  is  pretty  Important  to 
settle  at  the  outset  whether  those  who  defend  the  current 
creed  are  right  or  wrong  when  they  say  that  nothing  which 
will  answer  the  same  purpose  can  be  found  to  take  its  place. 
They  constitute  one  of  the  classes  who  will  be  responsible 
for  the  supposed  vacuum  ;  and  their  share  in  that  vacuum, 
their  contribution  to  it,  if  I  may  use  such  an  expression, 
consists  in  their  assertion  that  nothing  of  any  value  can 
take  the  place  of  the  sacred  origin  of  moral  injunctions. 
The  practical  test  of  whether  they  are  right  or  wrong  is  to 


438  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

be  found  in  legislation.  Let  us  suppose,  then,  a  legislative 
assembly  in  which  there  is  a  proposal  to  change  the  law  of 
murder,  or  to  do  away  with  it  altogether.  A  member  who 
does  not  believe  in  any  sacred  origin  of  the  command 
"  Thou  shalt  do  no  murder,"  moves  not  only  to  abolish  the 
death-penalty,  but  to  abolish  all  legal  definition  of  the 
crime,  and  leave  every  man  to  be  restrained  by  the  con- 
sciousness that,  if  he  takes  the  life  of  another,  he  will  cause 
a  great  deal  of  pain  and  misery  to  the  relations  and  friends 
of  that  person.  The  mover  argues  that  **  the  current 
creed  "  of  morality  is  worn  out ;  is  "  no  longer  fit,"  as  a 
regulator ;  and  that  the  safest  and  best  regulator  is  the  per- 
ception of  the  beneficial  effects  of  actions  of  kindness  and 
good-will,  and  of  the  disastrous  effects  of  cruelty  and  malice. 
He  is  answered  by  one  who  defends  the  current  creed,  and 
who  maintains  that,  as  human  nature  is  constituted,  the 
utilitarian  system  of  morals  can  not  take  the  place  of  the 
sacred  origin  as  the  ultimate  foundation  of  social  relations. 
But  the  majority  of  the  assembly  think  that  the  mover  of 
the  proposition  has  the  best  of  the  argument,  and  they  pro- 
ceed to  '^  secularize  "  morals  by  passing  his  bill  doing  away 
with  the  law  of  murder  altogether.  I  am  not  obliged  to 
extend  my  travels  anywhere,  where  I  do  not  care  to  go, 
and  I  confess  I  should  not  like  to  visit  that  country  after  it 
had  thus  "  secularized  "  morality. 

KosMicos.  Now  just  be  careful  to  note  that  this  whole 
science  of  conduct — the  science  of  ethics — the  foundation 
of  right  and  wrong,  is  a  product  of  evolution.  As  in  the 
development  of  organisms  the  higher  and  more  elaborate 
are  reached  after  a  great  length  of  time,  as  in  mechanics 
knowledge  of  the  empirical  sort  evolves  into  mechanical 
science  by  first  omitting  all  qualifying  circumstances  and 
generalizing  in  absolute  ways  the  fundamental  laws  of 
forces,  so  empirical  ethics  evolve  into  rational  ethics  by  first 
neglecting  all  complicating  incidents  and  formulating  the 


UTILITAEIAN  SYSTEM  OF  ETHICS.  439 

laws  of  right  action  apart  from  the  obscuring  effects  of 
special  conditions.  There  are  thus  reached,  after  a  great 
lapse  of  time,  those  ideal  ethical  truths  which  express  the 
absolutely  right.  Mr.  Spencer  treats  of  the  ideal  man 
among  ideal  men  ;  the  ideal  man  existing  in  the  ideal  social 
state.  '^On  the  evolution  hypothesis,"  he  says,  *Uhe  two 
presuppose  one  another ;  and  only  when  they  coexist  can 
there  exist  that  ideal  conduct  which  absolute  ethics  has  to 
formulate,  and  which  relative  ethics  has  to  take  as  the 
standard  by  which  to  estimate  divergences  from  right,  or 
degrees  of  wrong."*  But,  again,  observe  that  society  is 
now  in  a  transition  state ;  the  ultimate  man  has  not  yet 
been  reached  ;  the  evolution  of  ethics  is,  however,  going 
on,  retarded  as  it  may  be  by  various  frictions  arising  from 
imperfect  natures.  But  there  is  in  progress  an  adaptation 
of  humanity  to  the  social  state,  and  the  ultimate  man  will 
be  one  in  whom  this  process  has  gone  so  far  as  to  produce 
a  correspondence  between  all  the  promptings  of  his  nature 
and  all  the  requirements  of  his  life,  as  carried  on  in  society  ; 
so  that  there  is  an  ideal  code  of  conduct  formulating  the 
behavior  of  the  completely  adapted  man  in  the  completely 
evolved  society,  f 

SoPHEEEUS.  But  I  understand  that  we  have  already 
reached,  or  are  very  soon  to  reach,  a  condition  of  things  in 
which  the  supposed  sacred  origin  of  moral  injunctions  is 
now,  or  very  shortly  will  become,  no  guide.  We  are  to  fill 
the  vacuum  which  is  caused,  or  is  about  to  be  caused,  by 
its  disappearance,  by  substituting  as  the  standard  of  right 
and  wrong  the  perceptions  which  we  can  have  of  the  ef- 
fects of  actions  upon  the  sum  total  of  happiness,  because 
this  will  be  the  sole  standard  in  the  ideal  state  of  society 
in  which  the  ideal  man  will  ultimately  find  himself.  I 
will  not  insist  on  the  total  depravity  of  man's  nature, 

*  "  Data  of  Ethics,"  chap.  xv.  t  Ibid. 


440  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

because  I  never  borrow  an  argument  from  theologians. 
But  it  has  been  one  of  the  conclusions  that  I  have  drawn 
from  some  study  of  human  nature,  that  it  requires  very 
strong  restraints.  Not  only  must  some  of  the  restraints 
be  of  the  strongest  kind,  but  they  must  be  simple,  posi- 
tive, and  adapted  to  the  varying  dispositions  and  intel- 
ligence of  men.  There  can  not  well  be  imagined  any 
restraining  moral  force  so  efficacious  as  that  which  is  de- 
rived from  a  belief  that  the  Creator  of  the  universe  has 
ordained  some  moral  laws  ;  has  specialized  certain  conduct 
as  right  and  certain  conduct  as  wrong,  without  regard  to 
varying  circumstances.  As  the  foundation  of  all  that  part 
of  legislation  that  takes  cognizance  of  the  simpler  relations 
of  men  to  one  another — those  relations  which  are  always 
the  same — the  sacred  origin  of  moral  injunctions  is  of  far 
greater  force  than  the  perception  of  the  greatest-happiness 
principle  can  possibly  be.  If  a  man  is  tempted  to  commit 
murder,  is  he  not  far  more  likely  to  be  restrained  by  a  law 
which  he  knows  will  punish  him  without  regard  to  the 
misery  he  would  cause  to  the  friends  and  relatives  of  the 
person  whom  he  is  tempted  to  kill,  than  he  would  be  if  the 
law  were  based  on  the  latter  consideration  alone  ?  Do  away 
with  all  legislation  which  punishes  the  simpler  crimes  first 
and  foremost  because  they  break  the  laws  of  God,  and  sub- 
stitute as  the  restraining  agency  individual  recognition  of 
the  effect  of  actions  upon  the  sum  total  of  happiness,  and 
you  would  soon  see  that  one  of  two  consequences  would 
follow  :  either  you  would  have  no  criminal  code  at  all,  or 
it  would  be  one  that  would  be  governed  by  the  most  fluctu- 
ating and  uncertain  standards.  Moreover,  how  is  the  tran- 
sition from  the  sacred  source  of  the  simpler  moral  injunc- 
tions to  the  secularization  of  morals  to  be  effected  ?  I  once 
heard  a  wise  person  say  that  if  a  thing  is  to  be  done,  an  in- 
genious man  ought  to  be  able  to  show  how  it  is  to  be  done. 
I  suppose  the  secularization  of  morals  means  the  complete 


FADING  AWAY  OF  MOKAL  OBLIGATION.       441 

renoyation  of  our  ideas  of  right  and  wrong,  by  taking  as 
the  sole  standard  the  pleasure  or  pain,  the  happiness  or  un- 
happiness,  which  actions  will  produce.  IIow  are  you  going 
to  reach  this  ideal  state  ?  The  vacuum  is  rapidly  coming 
about.  How  are  you  going  to  take  the  first  step  in  filling 
it  ?  Before  the  yacuum  is  complete,  you  must  do  some- 
thing. You  haye  waited  until  the  eyolution  of  conduct  of 
the  purely  utilitarian  type  has  made  some  gi'eat  advances ; 
but  the  ideal  state  is  not  yet  reached  by  all  men.  You  wish 
to  hasten  its  approach,  and  you  must  begin  to  act.  There 
is  nothing  for  you  to  do  but  to  formulate  the  new  moral 
code  and  put  it  in  operation.  You  must  make  your  laws 
— ^if  you  continue  to  have  laws— so  that  murder  and  lying 
and  theft  will  not  be  punished  because  the  Almighty  has 
prohibited  them,  but  they  will  be  punished  simply  because 
they  produce  misery.  Do  you  think  you  would  ever  see 
every  individual  of  such  a  community  brought  to  an  ideal 
congruity  between  all  the  promptings  of  his  nature  and  all 
the  requirements  of  his  life,  as  carried  on  in  society  ?  That 
you  would  have  nothing  but  "  the  completely  adapted  man 
in  the  completely  evolved  society "  ?  I  fancy  that  you 
would  often  have  to  fall  back  upon  the  sacred  origin  of 
moral  injunctions,  and  to  punish  some  conduct  because  it 
breaks  a  law  of  divine  authority.  I  may  have  been  too 
much  in  the  habit  of  looking  at  things  practically  ;  but  I 
have  not  yet  discovered  that  the  feeling  of  obligation,  the 
sense  of  duty,  what  is  recognized  as  moral  obligation,  hav- 
ing its  origin  in  some  command,  and  enforced  by  some  kind 
of  compulsion,  can  be  dispensed  with. 

KosMicos.  I  must  refer  you  to  Mr.  Spencer's  explana- 
tion of  the  fact  that  the  sense  of  duty  or  moral  obligation 
fades  away  as  the  moral  motive  emerges  from  all  the  politi- 
cal, religious,  and  social  motives,  and  frees  itself  from  the 
consciousness  of  subordination  to  some  external  agency. 
He  does  not  shrink  from  the  conclusion  because  it  will  be 


442  CREATIOIT  OR  EVOLUTION? 

startling.  He  tells  us  that  it  will  be  to  most  very  startling 
to  be  informed  that  *'the  sense  of  duty  or  moral  obligation 
is  transitory,  and  will  diminish  as  fast  as  moralization  in- 
creases."    He  fortifies  his  position  thus  : 

Startling  though  it  is,  this  conclusion  may  be  satisfactorily  de- 
fended. Even  now  progress  toward  the  implied  ultimate  state  is 
traceable.  The  observation  is  not  infrequent  that  persistence  in 
performing  a  duty  ends  in  making  it  a  pleasure,  and  this  amounts 
to  the  admission  that,  while  at  first  the  motive  contains  an  element 
of  coercion,  at  last  this  element  of  coercion  dies  out,  and  the  act  is 
performed  without  any  consciousness  of  being  obliged  to  perform 
it.  The  contrast  between  the  youth  on  whom  diligence  is  enjoined, 
and  the  man  of  business  so  absorbed  in  affairs  that  he  can  not  be  in- 
duced to  relax,  shows  us  how  the  doing  of  work,  originally  under 
the  consciousness  that  it  ought  to  be  done,  may  eventually  cease  to 
have  any  such  accompanying  conscioueness.  Sometimes,  indeed, 
the  relation  comes  to  be  reversed ;  and  the  man  of  business  persists  in 
work  from  pure  love  of  it  when  told  that  he  ought  not.  ITor  is  it 
thus  with  self-regarding  feelings  only.  That  the  maintaining  and 
protecting  of  wife  by  husband  often  result  solely  from  feelings  di- 
rectly gratified  by  these  actions,  without  any  thought  o^  must;  and 
that  the  fostering  of  children  by  parents  is  in  many  cases  made  an 
absorbing  occupation  without  any  coercive  feeling  of  ought ;  are 
obvious  truths  which  show  us  that  even  now,  with  some  of  the 
fundamental  other-regarding  duties,  the  sense  of  obligation  has 
retreated  into  the  background  of  the  mind.  And  it  is  in  some  de- 
gree so  with  other-regarding  duties  of  a  higher  kind.  Conscien- 
tiousness has  in  many  outgrown  that  stage  in  which  the  sense  of  a 
compelling  power  is  joined  with  rectitude  of  action.  The  truly 
honest  man,  here  and  there  to  be  found,  is  not  only  without  thought 
of  legal,  religious,  or  social  compulsion,  when  he  discharges  an 
equitable  claim  on  him ;  but  he  is  without  thought  of  self-compul- 
sion. He  does  the  right  thing  with  a  simple  feeling  of  satisfaction 
in  doing  it;  and  is,  indeed,  impatient  if  anything  prevents  him 
from  having  the  satisfaction  of  doing  it. 

Evidently,  then,  with  complete  adaptation  to  the  social  state, 
that  element  in  the  moral  consciousness  which  is  expressed  by  the 
word  obligation  will  disappear.    The  higher  actions  required  for 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS.  443 

the  harmonious  carrjing  on  of  life  will  be  as  much  matters  of  course 
as  are  those  lower  actions  which  the  simple  desires  prompt.  In  their 
proper  times  and  places  and  proportions,  the  moral  sentiments  will 
guide  men  just  as  spontaneously  and  adequately  as  now  do  the  sen- 
sations. And  though,  joined  with  their  regulating  influence  when 
this  is  called  for,  will  exist  latent  ideas  of  the  evils  which  non-con- 
formity would  bring,  these  will  occupy  the  mind  no  more  than  do 
ideas  of  the  evils  of  starvation  at  the  time  when  a  healthy  appetite 
is  being  satisfied  by  a  meal. 

SoPHEREUs.  There  is  a  religion  in  the  world  called  Chris- 
tianity, with  which  we  are  tolerably  familiar.  It  compre- 
hends a  system  of  morality  which,  when  completely  observed, 
develops  the  truly  good  man,  the  man  who  does  the  right 
thing  with  a  feeling  of  satisfaction  in  doing  it,  and  brings 
ahout  those  higher  actions  which  are  required  for  the  har- 
monious carrying  on  of  life,  as  matters  of  course,  just  as  surely 
as  the  same  result  can  be  brought  about  by  the  most  ideal 
secularization  of  morals  that  any  philosophical  theories  can 
accomplish.  Whatever  may  be  the  evidences  by  which  the 
sacred  origin  of  Christianity  is  supposed  to  be  established, 
it  is  certain  that  this  religion  does  not  omit,  but  on  the 
contrary  it  presupposes  and  asserts,  as  the  foundation  of 
its  moral  code,  that  the  sense  of  obligation  to  which  it 
appeals  is  the  consciousness  of  obligation  to  obey  divine 
commands.  It  proceeds  upon  the  idea  that  human  nature 
stands  in  need  of  some  coercion  ;  that  the  sense  of  obliga- 
tion is  not  to  be  allowed  to  retreat  into  the  background  of 
the  mind,  but  that  a  sense  of  the  compelling  power  must 
be  kept  joined  with  rectitude  of  action,  otherwise  there 
will  be  a  failure  of  rectitude.  It  is  considered,  I  believe, 
that  the  adaptation  of  the  Christian  morality  to  the  whole 
nature  of  man,  by  means  of  the  compelling  power,  the 
consciousness  of  which  is  not  to  be  transitory,  but  is  to  be 
universal  and  perpetual,  is  very  strong  proof  that  this  re- 
ligion came  from  a  being  who  understood  human  nature 


4M  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

better  tlian  we  can  understand  it.  However  this  may  be, 
it  is,  at  all  events,  certain  that  the  scheme  of  Christian 
morality  proceeds  upon  the  necessity  for  a  more  efficacious 
regulator  of  human  conduct  than  the  simple  feeling  of  sat- 
isfaction in  doing  right,  or  the  feeling  of  dissatisfaction  in 
doing  wrong  ;  and,  although  the  true  Christian  is,  in  com- 
pleteness of  moral  character,  like  Mr.  Spencer's  ideal  man, 
and  although  a  society  completely  Christian  would  be  that 
ideal  social  state  in  which  there  would  be  perfect  congruity 
between  the  lives  of  men  and  the  welfare  of  that  society, 
yet  the  Christian  religion,  if  I  understand  it  rightly,  does 
not  assume  that  there  will  be  more  than  an  approximation 
to  that  universal  state  of  perfection  while  the  human  race 
remains  on  earth.  The  proof  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  the 
fact  that  this  religion  does  not  contemplate  a  time  when 
divine  command  is  to  cease  as  the  restraining  agency  on 
earth  ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  it  appears  to  assume  that  obe- 
dience to  the  divine  will  is  to  continue  in  another  life  to  be 
a  perpetual  motive,  as  it  has  been  in  this  life.  All  this 
may  be  without  such  proof  as  *^ science"  demands,  but  it 
is  certain  that  the  scheme  of  Christian  morality  is  based 
upon  the  idea  that  the  Creator  has  made  obedience  to  his 
laws,  because  they  are  his  laws,  the  great  regulator  of 
human  conduct.  If  the  Creator  had  so  made  men  that 
the  consciousness  of  the  effect  of  conduct  on  the  happi- 
ness or  misery  of  our  fellow-men  would  be  sufficient  as  a 
regulator,  it  is  rational  to  conclude  that  he  would  not 
have  imposed  commands  which  were  to  be  obeyed  because 
they  are  commands.  However  great  may  be  the  approxi- 
mation to  a  complete  adaptation  of  "the  social  state,  I 
do  not  look  forward  to  the  disappearance  of  that  element 
in  the  moral  consciousness  which  is  expressed  by  the  word 
obligation,  because  obligation,  in  its  ultimate  sense,  is 
obedience  to  a  higher  power.  Obedience  for  its  own 
sake,  obedience  because  there  is  a  command,  irrespect- 


THE  LAW  OF  OBEDIENCE.  445 

ive  of  all  the  reasons  for  the  command,  is  a  law  which  is 
illustrated  in  very  many  of  the  relations  of  life.  A  wise 
parent  will  sometimes  explain  to  his  child  why  he  com- 
mands some  things  and  prohibits  others  ;  but  if  he  means 
to  train  that  child  in  the  way  he  should  go,  he  will  some- 
times require  him  to  obey  for  the  mere  purpose  of  teaching 
him  that  obedience  without  question  or  inquiry  is  a  law  of 
his  nature.  A  master  of  a  vessel,  which  is  in  peril  at  sea, 
gives  an  order  to  the  sailors.  They  may  or  may  not  under- 
stand the  reasons  for  it.  But  what  sort  of  sailors  would 
they  be  if  they  did  not  act  upon  the  consciousness  that 
unquestioning  obedience  is  the  law  of  their  relation  to  the 
ship? 

In  the  earliest  traditions  that  we  have  of  the  human 
race,  as  those  traditions  are  accepted  by  the  Western  na- 
tions, we  find  a  pretty  striking  and  very  simple  instance  of 
this  law  of  obedience.  The  first  pair  of  human  beings  are 
placed  in  a  garden  where  they  are  at  liberty  to  eat  of  the 
fruit  of  every  tree  save  one,  but  of  that  one  their  Creator 
absolutely  forbids  them  to  partake.  He  assigns  to  them  no 
reason  for  the  prohibition,  but  he  lays  upon  them  his  abso- 
lute command,  on  the  penalty  of  death  if  they  are  disobe- 
dient. One  of  them  begins  to  reason  about  the  matter — an 
allegorical  creature  or  being,  called  the  serpent,  tempting 
her  with  certain  advantages  that  she  will  get  from  eating 
this  particular  fruit.  She  yields,  disobeys,  and  persuades 
her  husband  to  do  the  same.  The  consequences  follow,  as 
their  Creator  told  them  they  would.  The  law  of  obedience 
which  this  story  illustrates  has  been  in  operation  through 
all  the  ages,  and  society  can  no  more  dispense  with  it  than 
it  can  dispense  with  any  of  the  physical  laws  that  govern 
the  universe. 

KosMicos.  Are  you  going  back  to  the  fables  for  the  sa- 
cred origin  of  moral  injunctions  ?  I  thought  you  had  got 
beyond  that. 


446  CREATION?"  OR  EYOLUTION? 

SoPHEKEUS.  I  use  an  illustration  wherever  I  find  it.  I 
am  perfectly  content  that  you  should  call  the  story  of  Adam 
and  Eve  a  fable,  but  the  law  of  obedience  which  it  illus- 
trates is  a  tremendous  fact.  The  incident,  fable  or  no 
fable,  is  eminently  human,  and  it  is  occurring  every  day  in 
human  experience.  It  is  not  strange  that  the  first  Hebrew 
tradition  should  have  been  one  that  illustrates  in  so  simple 
a  manner  the  existence  of  the  law  of  obedience.  In  like 
manner,  it  is  not  strange  that  the  Christian  system  of  ethics 
should  have  been  based  on  the  existence  of  this  same  law  of 
obedience  to  commands.  This  Christian  system  of  ethics 
has  dispensed  with  a  great  many  minute  observances  which 
one  branch  of  the  Semitic  race  believed  were  imposed  upon 
them  as  commands  by  their  Creator ;  but  it  has  not  dis- 
placed the  law  of  obedience,  or  dispensed  with  certain  moral 
injunctions  as  divine  commands,  for  it  proceeds  upon  the 
great  truth  that  human  nature  requires  that  kind  of  re- 
straint, and  that  there  are  certain  actions  which  can  not  be 
left  without  it. 

KoSMiGOS.  Mr.  Spencer  has  anticipated  you.  Your  ref- 
erence to  Christianity  is  not  happy.  Having  gone  through 
with  the  explanation  of  the  evolution  process  in  the  devel- 
opment of  the  highest  conception  of  morals,  and  having 
shown  that  what  now  characterizes  the  exceptionally  highest 
natures  will  eventually  characterize  all,  he  has  something 
to  say  about  the  reception  of  his  conclusions,  to  which,  as 
you  have  referred  to  the  Christian  system  of  morals,  you 
would  do  well  to  attend  : 

§  98.  That  these  conclosions  will  meet  with  any  considerable  ac- 
ceptance is  improbable.  N"either  with  current  ideas  nor  with  cur- 
rent sentiments  are  they  suflBciently  congruous. 

Such  a  view  will  not  be  agreeable  to  thos^  who  lament  the 
spreading  disbelief  in  eternal  damnation,  nor  to  those  who  follow 
the  apostle  of  brute  force  in  thinking  that  because  the  rule  of  the 
strong  hand  was  once  good  it  is  good  for  all  time;  nor  to  those 


"EATIONALIZED  YEKSION"  OF  ETHICS.        447 

whose  reverence  for  one  v/ho  told  them  to  put  up  the  sword  is  shown 
by  using  the  sword  to  spread  his  doctrine  among  heathens.  From 
the  ten  thousand  priests  of  the  religion  of  love,  who  are  silent  when 
the  nation  is  moved  by  the  religion  of  hate,  will  come  no  sign  of 
assent ;  nor  from  their  bishops  who,  far  from  urging  the  extreme 
precept  of  the  Master  they  pretend  to  follow,  to  turn  the  other  cheek 
when  one  is  smitten,  vote  for  acting  on  the  principle — strike  lest  ye 
be  struck.  Nor  will  any  approval  be  felt  by  legislators  who,  after 
praying  to  be  forgiven  their  trespasses  as  tliey  forgive  the  trespasses 
of  others,  forthwith  decide  to  attack  those  who  have  not  trespassed 
against  them ;  and  who,  after  a  Queen's  speech  has  invoked  "  the 
blessing  of  Almighty  God  "  on  their  councils,  immediately  provide 
means  for  committing  political  burglary. 

But  though  men  who  profess  Christianity  and  practice  paganism 
can  feel  no  sympathy  with  such  a  view,  there  are  some,  classed  as 
antagonists  to  the  current  creed,  who  may  not  think  it  absurd  to 
believe  that  a  rationalized  version  of  its  ethical  principles  will  event- 
ually be  acted  upon. 

SoPHEKEUS.  "  Our  withers  are  un wrung."  I  am  not  a 
believer  in  eternal  damnation  ;  I  am  not  an  apostle  of  brute 
force  ;  I  am  not  in  favor  of  using  the  sword  to  spread  a  re- 
ligion of  love  ;  I  am  not  a  priest  or  a  bishop,  nor  am  I  a 
member  of  Parliament  or  of  any  other  legislative  body.  I 
am  a  simple  inquirer,  endeavoring  to  ascertain  the  sound- 
ness of  certain  systems  of  philosophy.  If  there  are  men 
who  profess  Christianity  and  practice  paganism,  I  do  not 
see  that  this  fact  should  deter  me  from  estimating  the  na- 
ture of  the  Christian  religion,  as  I  would  endeavor  to  esti- 
mate the  character  of  any  other  religion.  It  is  no  concern 
of  mine  whether  men  who  profess  Christianity  and  practice 
paganism  can  feel  any  sympathy  with  Mr.  Spencer's  views. 
The  question  for  me  is  whether  I  can  feel  any  sympathy 
with  his  views.  I  will,  therefore,  go  on  to  tell  you  why  I 
do  not  believe  that  a  merely  ** rationalized  version"  of  the 
ethical  principles  of  Christianity  will  take  the  place  of  those 
divine  injunctions  on  which  the  ethics  of  Christianity  are 


448  CREATIOIlT  OR  EVOLUTION? 

primarily  based.  Observe,  now,  that  I  do  not  enter  upon 
the  proofs  of  the  divine  authority  or  the  divine  nature  of 
Christ.  I  point  to  nothing  but  the  fact  that  the  Christian 
ethics  presuppose  a  divine  and  superhuman  origin  of  moral 
injunctions.  About  the  fact  that  they  presuppose  and  as- 
sume the  sacred  origin  of  moral  injunctions,  there  can  be 
no  controversy.  We  read  that  the  question  was  put  to 
Jesus,  "What  commandment  is  first  of  all  ?"  and  the  an- 
swer was,  "  The  first  is,  Hear,  0  Israel ;  the  Lord  our  God, 
the  Lord  is  one  ;  and  thou  shalt  love  thy  God  with  all  thy 
heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  strength.  The 
second  is  this.  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself. 
There  is  none  other  .commandment  greater  than  these."  * 
The  person  who  made  this  answer  may  or  may  not  have 
been  a  divinely  commissioned  teacher,  but,  whatever  he  was, 
the  question  that  was  put  to  him  was  a  very  searching  one, 
and  both  question  and  answer  assume  two  things  :  first,  that 
there  is  a  being,  man,  to  whom  commands  are  addressed ; 
secondly,  that  there  is  a  being,  God,  by  whom  commands 
are  given.  Jesus  undertakes  to  inform  those  who  ques- 
tioned him,  what  are  the  two  commandments  than  which 
there  are  none  greater  addressed  to  human  beings  ;  and  in 
this  answer  he  covers  the  existence  of  man  as  one  being  and 
the  existence  of  God  as  another  being.  In  any  scheme  of 
philosophy  which  ignores  the  existence  of  these  two  beings 
— ignores  the  existence  of  man  as  a  being  capable  of  receiv- 
ing and  acting  upon  a  command,  and  the  existence  of  a 
being  capable  of  addressing  a  command  to  man — there  must 
necessarily  be  a  great  defect ;  not  because  Jesus,  a  supposed 
divinely  commissioned  teacher,  assumed  that  there  are  two 
such  beings,  but  because  without  the  hypothesis  of  their 
existence  there  can  be  no  ethical  system  whatever.  The 
crucial  test  of  the  soundness  of  Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy 

*  Revised  version  of  St.  Mark's  gospel. 


SPENCER'S  PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND.  449 

is,  therefore,  whether  he  negatives  the  existence  of  man  and 
the  existence  of  God. 

Undoubtedly,  there  is  a  certain  kind  of  consistency  and 
completeness  in  Mr.  Spencer's  whole  philosophy.  Begin- 
ning with  biology,  he  traces  all  organized  life  back  to  the 
original  molecules  of  organizable  matter,  and  he  makes  man, 
in  his  physical  structure,  a  product  of  successive  modifica- 
tions of  organisms  out  of  one  another,  by  simple  generation. 
This  ignores  the  Creator  as  a  being  specially  fashioning 
the  human  animal,  which  Mr.  Spencer  thinks  is  a  concep- 
tion too  grossly  anthropomorphic  to  stand  the  slightest  sci- 
entific scrutiny.  He  then  takes  up  what  he  calls  **  psy- 
chology," and  deals  with  what  he  considers  the  origin  and 
nature  of  the  human  mind.  He  makes  consciousness  to 
consist  in  tracts  of  feeling  in  the  nervous  organization.  He 
denies  that  mind  is  an  entity,  a  being,  perceiving  and  recog- 
nizing ideas  suggested  by  the  impressions  produced  upon 
the  nervous  organization  by  external  objects.  According 
to  his  psychological  system,  there  is  no  ego,  no  person,  no 
thinking  being,  behind  the  sensations  and  feelings  in  the 
nerve-center,  and  to  whom  the  nerve-center  suggests  ideas. 
Eejecting  the  hypothesis  of  such  a  being,  Mr.  Spencer 
treats  of  the  composition  of  mind  ;  and  he  makes  it  consist, 
not  in  a  being,  but  in  components  of  feelings  produced  by 
the  molecular  changes  of  which  nerve-corpuscles  are  the 
seats,  and  the  molecular  changes  transmitted  through  fibers. 
He  does  not  regard  the  ultimate  fabric  of  mind  as  a  thing 
admitting  of  any  inquiry.  He  says  that  its  proximate  com- 
ponents can  be  investigated,  and  that  these  are  feelings  and 
the  relations  between  feelings.  This  *'  method  of  compo- 
sition remains  the  same  throughout  the  entire  composition 
of  mind,  from  the  formation  of  its  simplest  feelings  up  to 
the  formation  of  those  immense  and  complex  aggregates 
of  feelings  which  characterize  its  highest  development." 
Here,  then,  we  must  stop.    We  are  not  to  conceive  of  mind 


450  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

as  an  organized  entity,  or  as  an  organism ;  or  as  a  some- 
thing in  which,  certain  powers  inhere,  and  which  affords  a 
field  for  their  action.  We  may  talk  of  a  '^  thread  of  con- 
sciousness/' meaning  aggregates  of  feelings  produced  by 
successiye  waves  of  molecular  change  in  the  nerve-corpus- 
cles, but  we  may  not  talk  of  "consciousness''  as  perception 
by  a  conscious  subject.  We  may  talk  of  feelings,  but  not 
of  a  subject  that  feels.  Mind,  then,  is  not  an  existence 
apart  from  physical  organization.  Its  phenomena  are  prod- 
ucts of  our  corporeal  organization.  Man  is  not  a  person  ; 
and,  if  he  is  not,  how  he  is  to  have  a  sense  of  obligation, 
how  there  is  to  be  any  intuitional  idea  of  right  and  wrong, 
in  the  sense  of  a  command  or  an  injunction  addressed  by 
one  being  to  another,  I  do  not  understand.  Mr.  Spencer 
does  not  help  me  to  understand  this,  and  obviously  he  does 
not  intend  to,  because  he  denies  it  absolutely.  His  system 
of  ethics  plainly  ignores  it ;  and  to  that  I  now  pass. 

He  makes  conduct  consist  in  the  adjustment  of  actions 
to  ends.  Good  conduct  is  when  the  actions  are  adjusted 
to  the  ends  of  producing  all  the  pleasure  and  happiness 
that  they  can  be  made  to  bring  about.  Bad  conduct  is 
when  the  actions  produce  only  pain  or  misery  to  some  one, 
or  there  is  not  a  proper  adjustment  of  them  to  the  end  of 
happiness.  Beginning,  as  you  described  it  in  our  last  con- 
ference, with,  the  lowest  orders  of  animals,  the  conduct  of 
man  is  the  same  adjustment  of  actions  to  ends  that  it  is  in 
them  ;  the  difference  being,  in  the  case  of  man,  that  as  an 
animal  he  has  a  greater  and  more  varied  power  of  complete 
adjustment  of  his  actions  to  wider  and  more  comprehensive 
ends  than  any  other  animal.  These  wider  and  more  com- 
prehensive ends  consist  in  the  full  accomplishment  of  hap- 
piness and  pleasure  to  other  beings.  This,  according  to 
Mr.  Spencer,  is  impliedly  admitted  by  those  who  assert  the 
sacred  origin  of  moral  injunctions ;  for,  when  pressed  for 
the  reason  why  moral  injunctions  have  been  given,  all  mor- 


SACKED  IlSrjUNCTIONS  IN"DISPENSABLE.        451 

alists,  he  says,  admit  that  the  ultimate  moral  aim  is  a  de- 
sirable state  of  feeling,  gratificatioD,  enjoyment,  happiness 
to  some  being  or  beings.  That  the  welfare  of  society  is  one 
of  the  moral  aims  which  moral  injunctions  of  the  sacred 
order  were  designed  to  accomplish,  so  far  as  special  in- 
junctions are  believed  to  have  been  given,  is  plain  enough. 
But  that  this  congruity  between  the  divine  commands  and 
the  happiness  of  others — the  useful  effect  of  such  commands 
— comprehends  the  whole  purpose  of  such  commands,  is  the 
ultimate  and  sole  reason  for  their  being  given,  so  far  as  they 
are  belieyed  to  have  been  given,  may  be  disproved  without 
difficulty.  For  example,  an  individual  may  be  an  utterly 
worthless  person,  a  curse  to  his  relatives  and  friends  and  to 
society,  irreclaimably  sunk  in  vice  and  misery,  a  mere  cum- 
berer  of  the  ground.  To  kill  him  will  produce  no  unhap- 
piness  to  any  one,  but  will  be  a  positive  relief  and  benefit. 
According  to  "the  current  creed,"  there  stands  a  sacred 
injunction,  "  Thou  shalt  do  no  murder."  This  is  accepted 
as  an  absolute,  fixed,  eternal  canon  of  the  divine  will.  You 
are  not  to  take  upon  yourself  individually  to  determine,  by 
any  standard  of  utility  applied  to  a  particular  case,  that  you 
can  rightfully  kill  a  human  being.  A  miser  is  alone  in  the 
world.  I  can  steal  his  hoarded  gold,  and  apply  it  to  good 
objects.  There  stands  the  command,  "Thou  shalt  not 
steal."  For  no  purpose,  for  no  object  whatever,  for  no  end 
whatever,  shall  you  commit  a  theft.  "  Society,"  to  borrow 
a  phrase  of  one  of  the  strongest  men  of  our  time,  "  would  go 
all  to  pieces  in  an  hour  "  if  it  were  to  adopt  only  the  utili- 
tarian standard  of  morality,  and  to  reject  the  sacred  origin 
of  moral  injunctions.*  The  reception  of  that  sacred  origin 
— the  belief  in  it — implies  that  man  is  a  being  capable  of 
receiving  and  obeying  a  divine  command.     The  existence 

*  The  late  Jeremiah  S.  Black  is  the  person  whose  language  is  here 
quoted,  although  it  was  used  with  refei-ence  to  something  else. 


452  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

of  such  a  being  is  negatived  by  Mr.  Spencer's  psychological 
system.  That  he  equally  negatives  the  existence  of  God  as 
a  being  capable  of  giving,  and  who  has  given,  moral  in- 
junctions to  man,  is  apparent  throughout  his  whole  scheme 
of  philosophy.  According  to  that  philosophy,  there  is 
nothing  in  the  universe  but  an  Omnipotent  Power,  which 
underlies  all  manifestations.  To  ascribe  a  personality  to 
that  Power  is  a  relic  of  the  primitive  beliefs  of  barbarians, 
and  it  is  one  that  is  rapidly  dying  out  of  the  conceptions  of 
educated  men. 

There  is,  therefore,  no  room  in  Mr.  Spencer's  philoso- 
phy for  any  moral  intuitions,  such  as  are  implied  in  the 
hypothesis  that  man  was  placed  under  an  obligation  to 
obey  his  Creator,  and  made  capable  of  recognizing  that 
obligation.  I  can  perceive  no  other  ultimate  foundation 
for  a  system  of  ethics.  As  to  the  idea  that  we  can  make  a 
system  of  ethics  which  is  to  relegate  to  individual  judg- 
ment the  adaptability  of  actions  to  produce  complete  happi- 
ness, and  to  have  no  other  standard  of  right  and  wrong, 
we  might  as  well  at  once  act  upon  the  maxim  that  the 
end  justifies  the  means,  and  leave  every  man  to  determine 
that  the  end  is  a  good  one ;  and,  therefore,  the  action  is 
good. 

KosMicos.  How  do  you  justify  the  death-penalty  which 
is  inflicted  by  society  ?  Have  you  any  justification  for  it, 
excepting  the  claim  that  it  is  a  useful  restraint  ? 

SoPHEREUS.  When  society  acts  judicially  in  the  punish- 
ment of  crime,  it  inflicts  such  punishments  as  experience 
shows  will  prevent,  or  tend  to  prevent,  others  from  com- 
mitting that  crime.  Its  authority  to  punish  with  death 
or  some  other  penalty  is  founded,  primarily,  in  regard  to 
the  simpler  crimes,  such  as  murder,  theft,  adultery,  false 
testimony,  etc.,  on  the  divine  prohibition,  which  a  belief 
in  the  sacred  origin  of  certain  special  moral  injunctions 
leads  it  to  accept ;  and,  secondly,  on  the  general  welfare 


MIND  NOT  AN  EXISTENCE.  453 

of  mankind.*  Eliminate  from  the  ethical  code  all  belief 
in  the  sacred  origin  of  moral  injunctions,  and  confine  the 
judicial  action  of  society  to  the  merely  utilitarian  effect  of 
individual  conduct,  and  you  will  surrender  the  whole  crimi- 
nal code  to  the  doctrine  that  the  individual  who  does  a  cer- 
tain act  is  to  be  punished  or  not  to  be  punished,  according 
to  the  effect  of  his  act  on  the  person  or  persons  who  are 
immediately  or  remotely  affected  by  it.  It  is  because  of 
Mr.  Spencer's  negation  of  man's  intuitive  sense  of  obliga- 
tion to  obey  divine  commands,  because  of  his  peculiar  sys- 
tem of  *' psychology,"  that  I  can  not  accept  the  system  to 
which  he  gives  the  name  of  "ethics."  He  ought  to  have 
invented  a  new  term  for  his  science  of  mind.  "Psycholo- 
gy," according  to  its  derivation,  and, as  it  is  used  in  the 
English  language,  means  discourse  or  treatise  on  the  human 
soul,  or  the  doctrine  of  man's  spiritual  nature.  If  he  has 
no  spiritual  nature,  no  soul,  what  does  this  philosopher 
mean  by  entitling  his  work  "  The  Principles  of  Psycholo- 
gy "  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  in  this  use  of  a  term  which  im- 
plies something  that  he  labors  to  show  does  not  exist,  he  is 
not  quite  consistent,  for  he  certainly  does  not  mean  to  admit 
that  man  has  a  soul,  in  the  sense  in  which  the  learned  world 
have  generally  used  the  term  "psychology."  But,  not  to 
stickle  for  verbal  criticisms,  I  will  endeavor  to  give  you  my 
conception  of  his  "scientific"  analysis  of  the  mind,  and  to 
contrast  it  with  the  other  analysis,  which  seems  to  me  to  be 
better  supported. 

KosMicos.  Take  care  that  you  do  not  misrepresent  him. 

SoPHEREUS.  I  shall  take  the  utmost  care  to  represent 
him  in  the  only  sense  in  which  I  can  understand  him  ;  and, 
if  I  do  not  represent  him  accurately,  you  wiU  correct  me. 

*  This  does  not  imply  that  the  punishment  inflicted  by  society  is  to  be 
always  the  same.  It  implies  only  that  there  is  to  be  some  punishment,  so 
long  as  the  prohibited  act  continues  to  be  committed. 


454  CREATIO]^  OR  EVOLUTION? 

Take,  in  the  first  place,  the  following  passage,  in  which  he 
defines  the  only  ego  that  has  any  existence  : 

That  the  ego  is  something  more  than  the  passing  group  of  feel- 
ings and  ideas  is  true  or  untrue  according  to  the  degree  of  compre- 
hension we  give  to  the  word.  It  is  true  if  we  include  the  body  and 
its  functions ;  but  it  is  untrue  if  we  include  only  what  is  given  in 
consciousness. 

Physically  considered,  the  ego  is  the  entire  organism,  including 
its  nervous  system ;  and  the  nature  of  this  ego  is  predetermined: 
the  infant  had  no  more  to  do  with  the  structure  of  its  brain  than 
with  the  color  of  its  eyes.  Further,  the  ego^  considered  physically, 
includes  all  the  functions  carried  on  by  these  structures  when 
supplied  with  the  requisite  materials.  These  functions  have  for 
their  net  result  to  liberate  from  the  food,  etc.,  certain  latent 
forces.  And  that  distribution  of  these  forces  shown  by  the  activi- 
ties of  the  organism,  is  from  moment  to  moment  caused  partly  by 
the  existing  arrangement  of  its  parts  and  partly  by  the  environing 
conditions. 

The  physical  structures  thus  pervaded  by  the  forces  thus  ob- 
tained, constitute  that  substantial  ego  which  lies  behind  and  deter- 
mines those  ever-changing  states  of  consciousness  we  call  mind. 
And  while  this  substantial  ego^  unknowable  in  ultimate  nature,  is 
phenomenally  known  to  us  under  its  statical  form  as  the  organism, 
it  is  phenomenally  known  under  its  dynamical  form  as  the  energy 
diffusing  itself  through  the  organism,  and,  among  other  parts, 
through  the  nervous  system.  Given  the  external  stimuli,  and  the 
nervous  changes  with  their  correlative  mental  states  depend  partly 
on  the  nervous  structures  and  partly  on  the  amount  of  this  diffused 
energy,  each  of  which  factors  is  determined  by  causes  not  in  con- 
sciousness but  beneath  consciousness.  The  aggregate  of  feelings 
and  ideas  constituting  the  mental  /,  have  not  in  themselves  the 
principle  of  cohesion  holding  them  together  as  a  whole ;  but  the  / 
which  continually  survives  as  the  subject  of  these  changing  states 
is  that  portion  of  the  Unknowable  Power  which  is  statically  con- 
ditioned in  special  nervous  structures  pervaded  by  a  dynamically- 
conditioned  portion  of  the  Unknowable  Power  called  energy.* 

*  "  Principles  of  Psychology,"  vol.  i,  pp.  503,  504,  §  220. 


THE  BODY  THE  ONLY  EGO.  455 

It  is  now  necessary  to  translate  this  ;  and  in  translating 
it,  it  is  necessary  to  attend  to  the  meaning  of  words.  Let 
us  begin  with  the  first  proposition  comprehended  in  this 
statement :  "  That  the  ego  is  something  more  than  the 
passing  group  of  feelings  and  ideas,  is  true  or  untrue  ac- 
cording to  the  degree  of  comprehensiveness  we  give  to  the 
word.  It  is  true  if  we  include  the  body  and  its  functions  ; 
but  it  is  untrue  if  we  include  only  what  is  given  in  con- 
sciousness." The  natural  antithesis  would  have  been  to 
contrast  what  is  included  in  the  iody  with  what  is  included 
in  the  mind.  But  as  he  does  not  admit  that  the  mind  is 
an  existence,  as  there  is  nothing  but  a  passing  group  of 
feelings  and  ideas,  not  a  person  who  perceives  feelings  and 
has  ideas,  he  speaks  of  what  is  given  in  consciousness,  con- 
sciousness being  nothing  but  that  passing  group,  an  ever- 
changing  series,  never  the  same,  and  never  laid  hold  of  and 
appropriated  by  a  conscious  subject.  We  do,  indeed,  call 
these  ever-changing  states  of  consciousness  mind,  but  this 
is  a  misnomer,  if  we  mean  it  in  the  sense  of  a  being. 
What  is  to  be  considered,  therefore,  when  the  analysis 
seeks  to  ascertain  the  real  and  only  ego,  is  the  body  and  its 
functions,  and  the  passing  group  of  feelings  .and  ideas 
which  is  given  in  consciousness. 

Let  us  pass  on  :  The  body  is  the  physical  structure 
and  its  functions.  It  is  pervaded  by  the  forces  which  its 
functions  liberate  from  the  latent  condition  in  which  they 
exist  in  food  and  other  environment.  This  physical  struct- 
ure, thus  pervaded  by  certain  forces,  is  the  substantial  ego 
which  lies  behind  and  determines  the  ever-changing  states 
of  consciousness  which  we  call  mind.  There  is  no  other 
ego  than  the  body.  It  is  phenomenally  known  to  us  under 
its  statical  form  as  the  organism  ;  that  is  to  say,  when  the 
body  is  contemplated  as  an  organism  which  is  not  acting, 
or  as  a  mere  structure.  But  it  is  phenomenally  known  to 
us  also  under  its  dynamical  form,  which  is  when  the  energy 


456  CREATIOI^  OR  EVOLUTIOiT? 

derived  from  the  pervading  forces  is  diffusing  itself  tlirougli 
the  organism.  Statical,*  I  understand,  refers  to  a  body  at 
rest,  or  in  equilibrium,  not  acting ;  dynamical  refers  to 
bodies  in  motion,  or  acted  on  by  force,  in  movement.  The 
human  body  is  phenomenally  known  to  us  in  both  of  these 
conditions  or  states.  When  it  is  in  the  dynamical  state, 
that  is,  when  it  is  acted  on  by  external  stimuli,  there  will 
be  nervous  changes ;  these  nervous  changes  have  correla- 
tive mental  states,  which  depend  partly  on  the  nervous 
structure  and  partly  on  the  amount  of  the  diffused  energy 
which  pervades  the  organism.  But  these  two  factors,  the 
nervous  changes  and  the  diffused  energy,  are  each  deter- 
mined by  causes  that  are  not  in  consciousness,  but  beneath 
consciousness.  This  I  understand  to  mean  that  when  there 
are  nervous  changes  from  a  state  of  rest  or  non-action,  pro- 
duced by  external  stimuli,  and  a  certain  amount  of  diffused 
energy  pervades  the  organism,  there  will  be  correlative 
mental  states,  which  are  determined  by  factors  that  are  not 
in  consciousness  but  beneath  consciousness.  Conscious- 
ness, therefore,  is  not  a  perception  by  a  conscious  subject, 
or  a  consciousness  of  a  self  experienced  by  a  being,  but  it 
is  a  passing  group  of  feelings  and  ideas,  which  have  no  co- 
hesion, are  never  the  same,  but  are  ever-changing  succes- 
sions of  impressions  produced  in  the  physical  organism. 

I  come  now  to  the  summary  and  conclusion  of  the 
whole  matter  as  expressed  in  the  last  sentence  of  the  para- 
graph which  I  have  read.  There  is  a  mental  I,  but  it  is 
not  a  person,  an  existence,  an  independent  ego.  It  is  con- 
stituted of  an  aggregate  of  feelings  and  ideas,  which  have 
not  in  themselves  a  principle  of  cohesion  that  holds  them 


*  Statical :  pertaining  to  bodies  at  rest  or  in  equilibrium. 
Dynamical :  pertaining  to  strength  or  power. 

Dynamics :  that  part  of  mechanical  philosophy  which  treats  of  bodies 
in  motion;  opposed  to  sto^i<w.    ("  Webster's  Dictionary.") 


MK.  SPENCER'S  PROOFS.  457 

together  as  a  whole.  They  are  merely  passing  groups  of 
feelings  and  ideas  which  are  never  the  same,  but  which 
succeed  one  another  without  connection  or  cohesion. 
There  is  an  I  which  continually  survives  as  the  subject 
of  these  changing  states,  but  it  is  that  portion  of  the  Un- 
knowable Power  which  is  statically  conditioned  in  special 
nervous  structures  pervaded  by  a  dynamically  conditioned 
portion  of  the  Unknowable  Power  called  energy. 

So  that  each  individual  of  the  human  race  is  to  be  con- 
templated, not  as  a  dual  existence,  composed  of  a  body  and 
a  mind,  united  for  a  certain  period,  but  as  a  subject  which 
is  continuously  undergoing  certain  physical  changes  by  the 
action  through  it  of  a  portion  of  the  energy  exerted  by  the 
Unknowable  Power.  The  Unknowable  Power  pulsates 
through  my  bodily  organism  a  certain  portion  of  its 
energy,  and  that  of  which  continuous  existence  can  alone 
be  predicated  is  this  portion  of  the  Unknowable  Power 
which  is  statically  conditioned  in  my  nervous  structure, 
pervaded  by  a  dynamically  conditioned  portion  of  that  Un- 
known Power. 

I  trust,  now,  it  will  not  be  said  that  I  misrepresent  Mr. 
Spencer  when  I  assert  that  he  ignores,  denies,  and  en- 
deavors to  disprove  the  existence  of  the  mind  of  man  as  a 
spiritual  entity,  capable  of  surviving  his  body.  Have  you 
any  fault  to  find  with  my  paraphrase  of  the  passage  on 
which  I  have  commented  ? 

KosMicos.  You  have  paraphrased  that  passage  fairly 
enough,  but  you  ought  to  attend  to  the  proof  which  he 
adduces  in  support  of  his  position  in  the  subsequent  pas- 
sage to  which  he  refers  you  in  the  one  that  you  have 
quoted.     Let  me  read  it : 

§  469.  And  now,  before  closing  the  chapter,  let  me  parenthetically 
remark  on  a  striking  parallelism  between  the  conception  of  the  Ob- 
ject thus  bnilt  up,  and  that  which  we  shall  find  to  be  the  proper 
conception  of  the  Subject.    For  just  in  the  same  way  that  the  Ob- 


458  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

ject  is  tlie  unknown  permanent  nexus  which  is  never  itself  a  phe- 
nomenon, but  is  that  which  holds  phenomena  together ;  so  is  the 
Subject  the  unknown  permanent  nexus  which  is  never  itself  a  state 
of  consciousness,  but  which  holds  states  of  consciousness  together. 
Limiting  himself  to  self- analysis,  the  Subject  can  never  learn  any- 
thing about  this  nexus^  further  than  that  it  forms  part  of  the  nexus 
to  that  peculiar  vivid  aggregate  he  distinguishes  as  his  body.  If, 
however,  he  makes  a  vicarious  examination,  the  facts  of  nervous 
structure  and  function,  as  exhibited  in  other  bodies  like  his  own, 
enable  him  to  see  how,  for  each  changing  cluster  of  ideas,  there  ex- 
ists a  permanent  nexus  which,  in  a  sense,  corresponds  to  the  perma- 
nent nexu^  holding  together  the  changing  cluster  of  appearances 
referable  to  the  external  body. 

For,  as  shown  in  earlier  parts  of  this  work,  an  idea  is  the  psychi- 
cal side  of  what  on  its  physical  side  is  an  involved  set  of  molecular 
changes  propagated  through  an  involved  set  of  nervous  plexuses. 
That  which  makes  possible  this  idea  is  the  pre-existence  of  these 
plexuses,  so  organized  that  a  wave  of  molecular  motion  diffused 
through  them  will  produce,  as  its  psychical  correlative,  the  compo- 
nents of  the  conception,  in  due  order  and  degree.  This  idea  lasts 
while  the  waves  of  molecular  motion  last,  ceasing  when  they  cease ; 
but  that  which  remains  is  the  set  of  plexuses.  These  constitute 
the  potentiality  of  the  idea,  and  make  possible  future  ideas  like  it. 
Each  such  set  of  plexuses,  perpetually  modified  in  detail  by  per- 
petual new  actions ;  capable  of  entering  into  countless  combinations 
with  others,  just  as  the  objects  thought  of  entered  into  countless 
combinations ;  and  capable  of  having  its  several  parts  variously  ex- 
cited, just  as  the  external  object  presents  its  combined  attributes  in 
various  ways — is  thus  the  permanent  internal  nexus  for  ideas,  an- 
swering to  the  permanent  external  nexus  for  phenomena.  And 
just  as  the  external  nexus  is  that  which  continues  to  exist  amid 
transitory  appearances,  so  the  internal  nexus  is  that  which  continues 
to  exist  amid  transitory  ideas.  The  ideas  have  no  more  a  continued 
existence  than  we  have  found  the  impressions  to  have.  They  are 
like  the  successive  chords  and  cadences  brought  out  from  a  piano, 
which  successively  die  away  as  other  ones  are  sounded.  And  it 
would  be  as  proper  to  say  that  these  passing  chords  and  cadences 
thereafter  exist  in  the  piano,  as  it  is  proper  to  say  that  passing  ideas 
thereafter  exist  in  the  brain.    In  the  one  case,  as  in  the  other,  the 


MR.  SPENCER'S  PROOFS.  459 

actual  existence  is  the  structure  which,  under  like  couditions,  again 
evolves  like  combinations. 

It  is  true  that  we  seem  to  have  somewhere  within  us  these  sets  of 
faint  states  answering  to  sets  of  vivid  states  which  once  occurred. 
It  is  true  that  in  common  life  ideas  are  spoken  of  as  being  treasured 
up,  forming  a  store  of  knowledge ;  the  implied  notion  being  that 
they  are  duly  arranged  and,  as  it  were,  pigeon-holed  for  future  use. 
It  is  true  that  in  psychological  explanations,  ideas  are  often  referred 
to  as  thus  having  a  continued  existence.  It  is  true  that  our  forms 
of  expression  are  such  as  to  make  this  implication  unavoidable; 
and  that  in  many  places  throughout  this  work  the  phrases  used  ap- 
parently countenance  it ;  though,  I  believe,  they  are  always  trans- 
formable into  their  scientific  equivalents,  as  above  expressed.  But 
here,  as  in  metaphysical  discussions  at  large,  where  our  express  ob- 
ject is  to  make  a  final  analysis,  and  to  disentangle  facts  from  hypoth- 
eses, it  behooves  us  to  recognize  the  truth  that  this  popular  concep- 
tion, habitually  adopted  into  psychological  and  metaphysical  discus- 
sions, is  not  simply  gratuitous,  but  absolutely  at  variance  with 
experience.  All  which  introspection  shows  us  is  that  under  certain 
conditions  there  occurs  a  state  of  consciousness  more  or  less  like 
that  which  previously  occurred  under  more  or  less  like  conditions. 
Not  only  are  we  without  proof  that  during  the  interval  this  state  of 
consciousness  existed  under  some  form ;  but,  so  far  as  observation 
reaches,  it  gives  positive  evidence  to  the  contrary.  For  the  new  state 
is  never  the  same — is  never  more  than  an  approximate  likeness  of 
that  which  went  before.  It  has  not  that  identity  of  structure 
which  it  would  have  were  it  a  pre-existing  thing  presenting  itself 
afresh.  Nay,  more ;  even  during  its  presence  its  identity  of  struct- 
ure is  not  preserved — it  is  not  literally  the  same  for  two  seconds  to- 
gether. No  idea,  even  of  the  most  familiar  object,  preserves  its 
stability  while  in  consciousness.  To  carry  further  the  foregoing 
simile,  its  temporary  existence  is  like  that  of  a  continuously-sounded 
chord,  of  which  the  components  severally  vary  from  instant  to  in- 
stant in  pitch  and  loudness.  Quite  apart,  however,  from  any  inter- 
pretation of  ideas  as  not  substantive  things  but  psychical  changes, 
corresponding  to  physical  changes  wrought  in  a  physical  structure, 
it  suflSces  to  insist  upon  the  obvious  truth  that  the  existence  in  the 
Subject  of  any  other  ideas  than  those  which  are  passing,  is  pure 
hypothesis  absolutely  without  any  evidence  whatever. 
21 


460  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION  ? 

And  here  we  come  npon  yet  another  phase  of  that  contradiction 
which  the  anti-realistic  conception  everywhere  presents.  For  set- 
ting out  from  the  data  embodied  in  the  popular  speech,  which  as- 
serts both  the  continued  existence  of  ideas  and  the  continued  exist- 
ence of  objects,  it  accepts  the  fiction  as  a  fact,  and  on  the  strength 
of  it  tries  to  show  that  the  fact  is  a  fiction.  Continued  existence 
being  claimed  for  that  wliich  has  it  not,  is  thereupon  denied  to  that 
which  has  it.* 

SoPHEEEUS,  The  writings  of  Mr.  Spencer,  more  than 
those  of  any  other  person  of  equal  reputation  that  I  have 
met  with,  require  close  examination  in  order  to  test  tlie 
soundness  of  his  propositions  and  assertions.  Such  a  pas- 
sage as  the  one  which  you  have  now  quoted  appears,  on  a 
first  reading,  to  be  quite  plausible.  When  it  is  read  care- 
fully two  or  three  times,  and  analyzed,  it  is  found  to  be 
untenable  in  its  reasoning,  and  largely  made  up  of  dogmatic 
assumptions.  I  shall  now  give  you  my  reasons  for  this 
criticism.  In  the  first  place,  let  us  go  through  the  passage 
and  fix  the  meanings  of  words.  **  Nexus,"  although  not  a 
term  adopted  into  the  English  language,  means,  I  presume, 
bond  or  ligament.  '*  Plexus"  is  a  word  that  we  find  in 
English  dictionaries  as  a  scientific  term,  and  it  means  a 
union  of  vessels,  nerves,  or  fibers,  in  the  form  of  net-work,  f 
Taking  along  these  meanings,  we  find  that  the  subject,  the 
only  thing  of  which  a  subjective  existence  can  be  predi- 
cated, is  the  ligament  which  holds  states  of  consciousness 
together,  and  this  permanent  ligament  is  unknown.  It  is 
not  itself  a  state  of  consciousness,  but  it  is  the  bond  which 
holds  states  of  consciousness  together.  These  states  of  con- 
sciousness are  the  ideas  which  are  passing  in  the  subject, 
which  are  never  the  same,  which  are  not  a  permanent  pos- 
session, and  therefore  there  is  in  the  subject  no  other  ex- 
istence than  the  passing  ideas  of  the  moment.    Ideas,  then, 

*  "Principles  of  Psychology,"  vol.  ii,  p.  484,  et  seq. 
f  "  Webster's  Dictionary."    Plexus. 


"SCIENTIFIC  EQUIVALENTS"  FOR  YOU  AND  ME.    461 

are  not  substantive  things,  but  psychical  changes,  corre- 
sponding to  physical  changes  wrought  in  a  physical  struct- 
ure. The  proof  which  is  supposed  to  make  this  a  tenable 
hypothesis  consists  of,  first,  what  can  be  learned  by  self- 
analysis,  or  by  my  introspection  of  myself ;  next  by  vicarious 
examination,  or  by  observing  the  facts  of  nervous  structure 
and  function  exhibited  in  other  bodies  like  my  own.  These 
examinations  enable  us  to  discover,  what  ?  Not  a  conscious 
person,  learning,  appropriating,  and  holding  ideas,  but  that 
there  exists  only,  for  each  changing  cluster  of  ideas,  a  per- 
manent nexus,  corresponding  to  the  permanent  nexus  which 
holds  together  the  changing  cluster  of  appearances  referable 
to  the  external  body.  We  next  have  the  assertion  that 
ideas  have  no  more  a  continued  existence  than  the  impres- 
sions made  in  the  external  body.  Both  are  transitory,  and 
in  both  the  only  continued  existence  is  the  nexus,  or  liga- 
ment which  binds  together  the  changing  impressions  and 
the  changing  clusters  of  ideas.  This  Mr.  Spencer  illus- 
trates by  the  successive  chords  and  cadences  brought  out 
from  a  piano.  These  have  no  existence  in  the  piano,  which 
is  nothing  but  a  mechanical  structure,  giving  forth  sounds, 
when  they  are  struck,  which  sounds  are  merely  passing 
chords  and  cadences ;  and  he  concludes  that  it  would  be 
just  as  proper  to  say  that  the  passing  chords  and  cadences, 
after  they  have  died  away,  exist  in  the  piano,  as  it  is  to 
say  that  passing  ideas,  after  the  nervous  impressions  have 
ceased,  exist  in  the  brain.  Let  us  now  go  back  and  exam- 
ine this  kind  of  psychology  in  detail.  Mr.  Spencer  speaks 
of  self -analysis,  and  of  the  analysis  of  other  minds  and 
bodies  like  our  own.  He  uses  the  terms  self,  others,  me, 
mine,  him,  his.  Who  or  what  is  this  thing  which  examines 
himself  or  another?  Who  and  what  are  "you"  or  "I," 
who  sit  here  talking  to  each  other  ?  Are  these  mere  forms 
of  expression,  always  transformable  into  their  scientific 
equivalents  ?    What  is  the  scientific  equivalent  for  he,  his. 


462  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

me,  mine,  you,  yours  ?  Mr.  Spencer  says  that,  under  cer- 
tain conditions,  there  occurs  a  state  of  consciousness  more 
or  less  like  other  states  of  consciousness  that  have  existed 
before,  but  that  the  only  permanent  thing  is  the  nexus 
which  holds  these  states  of  consciousness  together.  His 
illustration  of  the  piano  fails.  If  the  piano  were  a  struct- 
ure that  could  of  its  own  volition  give  forth  such  sounds  as 
it  chose  to  utter,  it  might  be  correct  to  speak  of  it  as  an 
existence  having  a  store  of  sounds  which  it  could  make 
reach  our  ears  when  and  as  it  saw  fit.  But  it  does  not 
happen  to  be  an  automatic  machine.  It  is  a  mere  collec- 
tion of  strings,  of  different  sizes  and  tensions,  which,  when 
struck  by  an  instrument  called  a  hammer,  cause  certain 
vibrations  in  the  air.  But  a  human  being  is  an  automatic 
organism  ;  one  that  can  at  pleasure  give  utterance  to  ideas 
through  the  vocal  organs,  so  that  they  are  communicated 
to  you.  When  I  give  utterance  to  an  idea,  through  my 
vocal  organs,  in  speaking  to  you,  do  I  draw  on  a  stock  of 
permanent  ideas,  some  of  which  I  express,  or  do  I  express 
nothing  but  a  passing  state  of  consciousness,  more  or  less 
like  other  states  of  consciousness  that  have  before  passed 
through  my  nervous  organization  ?  Mr.  Spencer  asserts 
that  the  notion  of  the  continued  existence  of  ideas  is  abso- 
lutely at  variance  with  experience.  On  the  contrary,  expe- 
rience proves  it  every  moment  of  our  lives. 

For  example  :  Years  ago  a  person  related  to  me  a  fact 
very  interesting  and  important  to  me,  but  I  have  not  until 
now  had  occasion  to  make  use  of  it.  I  have  a  perfect  recol- 
lection of  what  he  told  me.  It  bears  no  resemblance  to  any 
other  fact  of  which  I  ever  heard.  It  concerns  me  alone. 
I  have  a  perfect  recollection  of  it.  I  stored  it  up  for  future 
use  whenever  I  should  need  to  use  it.  Is  it  a  self-delusion 
that  I  have  stored  up  and  treasured  this  information  ? 
When  I  recollect  and  repeat  it,  just  as  it  was  told  me,  am 
I  doing  nothing  but  giving  expression  to  a  passing  idea. 


CONTINUITY  OF  IDEAS.  463 

more  or  less  like  the  original  idea  ?  This  would  be  a  rather 
dangerous  doctrine  to  adopt  as  the  interpretation  of  expe- 
rience. Human  testimony  respecting  things  that  we  have 
been  told,  or  have  seen,  would  be  a  pretty  uncertain  reli- 
ance if  the  memory  had  no  other  power  than  to  assimilate 
a  passing  idea,  more  or  less,  to  a  former  state  of  conscious- 
ness which  more  or  less  resembled  the  present  consciousness. 
Men  deviate  from  the  truth  rather  frequently,  now ;  but, 
teach  them  that  memory  is  nothing  but  the  assimilation, 
more  or  less,  of  a  passing  idea  to  some  other  idea  that  for- 
merly passed  through  their  heads,  and  I  should  be  rather 
afraid  of  their  testimony.  I  should  fear  that  the  "  psycho- 
logical changes  "  would  be  a  little  too  frequent,  and  that  the 
story  would  not  have  **  that  identity  of  structure  which  it 
would  have  were  it  a  pre-existing  thing  presenting  itself 
afresh." 

What  is  all  the  learning  of  the  scholar  ?  Has  he  treas- 
ured up  nothing  ?  Has  he  nothing  in  the  pigeon-holes  of 
his  mind  ?  Has  he  no  mind  in  which  to  store  his  acquisi- 
tions ?  Is  the  sole  actual  existence  "  the  structure  which, 
under  like  conditions,  again  evolves  like  combinations "  ? 
Must  he  find  himself  under  like  conditions  which  will  again 
evolve  like  combinations  of  ideas  in  passing  trains  of  con- 
sciousness, before  he  can  bring  forth  from  the  store-house 
of  his  mind  the  pre-existing  thing  that  lies  within  it  ? 

KosMicos.  I  must  here  interject  a  question  in  my  turn. 
What  is  the  proof  that  ideas  have  a  continued  existence  ? 
Speaking  of  the  brain  as  the  nerve-center,  in  which  impres- 
sions are  produced  by  molecular  changes  transmitted  along 
the  nerve-fibers,  what  proof  is  there  that  an  idea  which  is 
now  passing  through  the  brain  continues  to  exist  there,  any 
more  than  the  passing  chord  or  cadence  continues  to  exist 
in  the  piano  ? 

SoPHEREUS.  Do  you  not  see  that  the  very  power  of  dis- 
crimination which  we  possess,  whereby  we  distinguish  be- 


464  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

tween  present  and  former  conditions,  and  present  and  for- 
mer combinations,  proves  that  there  is  a  permanent  existing 
thing  in  an  idea  which  presents  itself  afresh,  and  with 
which  we  compare  the  passing  idea,  so  as  to  determine 
whether  they  are  the  same  ?  If  we  did  not  possess  this 
power,  all  thinking,  all  expression  of  ideas,  all  memory,  all 
that  part  of  consciousness  which  is  not  made  np  of  mere 
bodily  feelings  and  sensations,  would  be  nothing  but  the 
repetition  of  the  passing  idea ;  and  all  learning,  informa- 
tion, knowledge,  and  experience,  would  be  utterly  useless. 
If  there  did  not  exist  something  with  which  to  compare  the 
passing  idea  of  the  present  moment,  we  should  be  always 
floating  on  the  surface  of  the  passing  idea.  There  would 
be  no  continuity  in  our  intellectual  existence.  We  should 
be  reduced  to  the  condition  of  the  piano,  and  could  only 
give  forth  such  chords  and  cadences  as  are  produced  by 
successive  blows  of  the  hammer  upon  the  strings  of  the  in- 
strument. And  how  could  anything  originate  in  ourselves  ? 
What  is  the  faculty  which  produces  ideas  that  are  not  only 
new  to  ourselves,  not  only  not  suggested  by  passing  ideas, 
but  new  to  all  other  human  intellects,  and  never  embraced 
in  their  experience  until  we  put  them  within  their  appre- 
hension ?  What  did  Dante  do  when  he  produced  the  "  In- 
ferno "  ?  or  Milton,  when  he  composed  the  "Paradise  Lost''  ? 
or  Shakespeare,  when  he  composed  his  "Hamlet"?  or 
Goethe,  when  he  produced  his  "  Faust "  ?  Does  the  poet, 
when  he  gives  us  ideas  that  we  never  possessed  before,  origi- 
nate nothing  ?  If  he  is  a  maker,  a  creator,  in  the  realm  of 
ideas,  are  those  original  ideas,  which  neither  he  nor  any 
one  else  ever  had  before,  the  mere  result  of  like  combina- 
tions evolved  out  of  like  conditions,  when  neither  the  old 
conditions  nor  the  combinations  have  anything  to  do  with 
the  new  ideas  which  he  has  produced  ?  Surely,  in  reference 
to  the  great  productions  of  human  genius,  we  must  con- 
template the  mind  as  an  existence,  having  the  power  to  do 


ORIGINATING  KEW  IDEAS.  465 

something  more  than  to  produce  the  transitory  ideas  that 
are  passing  through  the  brain  from  the  impressions  on 
it,  communicated  through  the  nervous  structure.  Surely 
there  is  some  other  structure  than  that  which  can  be 
likened  to  the  piano.  Surely  there  is  something  more  than 
a  set  of  plexuses  "which  constitute  the  potentiality  of  an 
idea,  and  make  possible  future  ideas  like  it '' ;  for  there  are 
possible  future  ideas  which  are  not  like  any  former  ideas, 
which  do  not  depend  on  any  set  of  plexuses,  and  do  not 
cease  to  be  possible  when  the  waves  of  molecular  motion 
cease.  These  possible  future  ideas  are  the  conceptions 
which  the  mind  originates  in  itself ;  which  are  unlike  any- 
thing that  has  gone  before,  or  that  is  passing  now.  So  that 
there  are  two  kinds  of  ideas  :  the  kind  that  has  a  continued 
existence,  and  that  consists  in  knowledge,  and  is  drawn 
upon  by  memory ;  and  the  other,  the  kind  of  which  con- 
tinued existence  is  not  to  be  predicated  until  it  has  been 
formulated  by  the  faculty  of  original  production,  not  pro- 
duced by  an  exercise  of  memory,  but  produced  by  original 
creation. 

KosMicos.  Has  not  Mr.  Spencer  allowed  for  and  ac- 
counted for  all  that  you  claim  as  the  power  of  originating 
new  ideas  ?  Does  he  not  say  that  "  each  set  of  plexuses  " — 
each  set  of  the  net- work  of  ideas — is  "  perpetually  modified 
in  detail  by  perpetual  new  actions  "  ;  is  "  capable  of  enter- 
ing into  countless  combinations  with  others,  just  as  the 
objects  thought  of  entered  into  countless  combinations ; 
and  capable  of  having  its  several  parts  variously  excited, 
just  as  the  external  object  presents  its  combined  attributes 
in  various  ways  "  ?  Is  not  this  the  whole  matter,  in  regard 
to  what  you  call  the  power  of  originating  new  ideas  ? 

SoPHEBEUS.  No,  it  is  not.  In  the  first  place,  I  do  not 
believe  that  he  was  here  intentionally  speaking  of  any  ideas 
but  those  which  are  suggested  by,  or  involve  external  ob- 
jects.    But,  if  he  did  mean  to  include  the  production  of 


466  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

new  and  original  ideas  through  the  countless  combinations 
into  which  old  ones  may  be  made  to  enter,  his  theory  does 
not  fit  the  case  of  poetical  invention  of  new  ideas,  or  the 
invention  of  imaginary  characters,  or  lives ;  for  these  are 
creations  which  are  not  mere  combinations  of  old  ideas,  and 
the  more  they  depart  from  everything  suggested  by,  or  re- 
sembling, former  ideas,  the  more  we  are  obliged  to  recog- 
nize as  a  faculty  of  the  mind  the  power  to  originate  and 
formulate  new  ideas  that  did  not  previously  exist. 

KosMicos.  Well,  you  have  criticised  Mr.  Spencer's 
mental  philosophy  from  your  point  of  view.  Now  let  me 
hear  your  hypothesis  of  the  origin  and  nature  of  mind,  with 
which  you  promised  to  contrast  his  psychology,  and  which 
you  think  is  better  supported. 

SoPHEEEUS.  I  think  I  had  better  put  my  views  in  writ- 
ing, and  read  them  to  you  at  our  next  meeting.  You  can 
then  have  them  before  you  to  examine  at  your  leisure.  Let 
me  say  in  advance,  however,  that  I  shall  not  rely  on  any  of 
the  metaphysicians,  but  shall  endeavor  to  give  you  my  con- 
ception of  the  nature  of  mind  from  my  own  reflections,  and 
from  common  experience.  I  shall  make  my  examination 
of  the  nature  of  mind  precede  any  suggestion  of  its  probable 
origin,  just  as  I  think  we  should  examine  the  structure  of 
any  organism  before  we  undertake  to  deduce  its  probable 
origin. 


Here,  then,  closes  the  debate  between  these  two  persons, 
from  whom,  at  the  end  of  the  next  chapter,  I  shall  part 
with  a  reluctance  which  I  hope  the  reader  will  share.  Not 
for  victory  do  I  allow  Sophereus  to  explain  his  analysis  of 
mind,  without  describing  how  his  scientific  friend  receives 
it. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

Sophereus  discourses  on  the  Nature  and  Origin  of  the  Human  Mind. 

SoPHEEEUS,  in  fulfillment  of  his  intention  expressed  at 
their  last  meeting,  reads  to  the  scientist  the  following 

DISCOURSE   ON    THE    NATURE  AND    ORIGIN  OF    THE  HUMAN 

MIND. 

I  regard  the  mind  as  an  organism,  capable  of  anatomi- 
cal examination,  as  the  body  is,  but  of  course  by  yery  dif- 
ferent means.  In  the  anatomical  examination  of  an  animal 
organism  we  use  our  eye-sight  to  acquire  a  knowledge  of  its 
component  parts,  its  organs,  and  its  structure,  by  dissec- 
tion of  a  dead  or  inspection  of  a  living  subject.  But,  in 
studying  the  anatomy  of  mind,  we  have  a  subject  that  is 
beyond  our  visual  perception.  It  is  not,  however,  beyond 
our  examination.  We  carry  on  that  examination  by  means 
of  the  introspection  which  consciousness  enables  us  to  have 
of  our  own  minds,  and  by  observing  and  comparing  the 
phenomena  of  mind  as  manifested  in  other  persons.  If 
these  respective  means  of  investigation  enable  us  to  reach 
the  conviction  that  in  each  individual  of  the  human  race 
there  is  an  existence  of  a  spiritual  nature  and  another  exist- 
ence of  a  corporeal  or  physical  nature,  we  shall  have  at- 
tained this  conclusion  by  observing  the  difference  between 
the  two  organisms.  The  fact  that  we  can  not  detect  the 
bond  that  unites  them  while  they  are  united  should  not 
lead  us  to  doubt  their  distinct  existence  as  organisms  of 


468  CREATION  OK  EVOLUTION? 

different  natures,  but  made  for  a  tem]3orary  period  to  act 
on  and  with  each  other. 

Before  entering  further  into  the  subject,  I  will  refer  to 
some  of  the  terms  which  we  are  obliged  to  use  in  speaking 
of  the  nature  of  mind  as  an  organism,  when  contrasted 
with  the  nature  of  the  physical  organism.  AVe  speak,  for 
example,  and  from  the  want  of  another  term  we  are  obliged 
to  speak,  of  the  substance  of  mind.  But,  while  we  thus 
speak  of  mind  in  a  term  of  matter,  there  is  no  implication 
that  the  subject  of  which  we  speak  is  of  the  same  nature  as 
that  which  constitutes  the  physical  organism  ;  nor  is  there 
any  danger  of  the  incorporation  of  materialistic  ideas  with 
our  ideas  of  the  fabric  of  mind.  On  the  contrary,  the  very 
nature  of  the  inquiry  is  whether  that  which  constitutes 
mind  is  something  different  from  that  which  constitutes 
body  ;  and,  although  in  speaking  of  both  we  use  the  term 
substance,  we  mean  in  the  one  case  organized  matter,  and 
in  the  other  case  organized  spirit.  There  is  a  very  notable 
instance  of  a  corresponding  use  of  terms  in  the  passage  of 
one  of  St.  Paul's  epistles,  where  he  discourses  on  the  doc- 
trine of  the  resurrection.  According  to  my  universal  cus- 
tom when  I  refer  to  any  of  the  writings  regarded  by  the 
Christian  world  as  sacred,  or  inspired,  I  lay  aside  altogether 
the  idea  of  a  person  speaking  by  divine  or  any  other  au- 
^ority.  I  cite  the  statement  of  St.  Paul,  in  its  philo- 
sophical aspect,  as  an  instance  of  the  use  of  the  term  body 
applied  to  each  of  the  distinct  organisms.  His  statement, 
or  assertion,  or  assumption — call  it  what  you  please — is,  "  If 
there  is  a  natural  body,  there  is  also  a  spiritual  body " ;  * 
he  uses  the  term  hocly  in  speaking  of  that  which  is  natural, 
or  of  the  earth,  earthy,  and  of  that  which  is  spiritual,  or 
heavenly.  Without  following  him  into  the  nature  of  the 
occurrence  which  he  affirms  is  to  take  place  in  the  resurrec- 
tion, the  question  is  whether  he  was  or  was  not  philosophi- 

*  Corinthians,  revised  version. 


THE  NATUKAL  AND  THE  SPIRITUAL  BODY.    469 

cally  correct,  in  speaking  of  two  kinds  of  organisms,  one 
composed  of  matter,  and  liable  to  corruption  and  dissolu- 
tion, and  the  other  composed  of  spirit,  indestructible  and 
imperishable. 

In  order  to  be  understood,  he  was  obliged  to  use  the 
term  tody  in  reference  to  both  of  these  organisms,  just  as 
we  are  obliged  to  use  the  term  substance  when  we  speak  of 
the  subject  of  contemplation  as  a  physical  or  as  a  spiritual 
organism.  Can  this  distinctness  of  nature  be  predicated  of 
the  body  and  the  mind  of  man  before  what  we  call  death  ? 

The  peculiar  occurrence  which  St.  Paul  so  "vigorously 
and  viyidly  describes  as  what  is  to  happen  at  the  resurrec- 
tion, is  a  prophecy  in  which  he  mingles  with  great  force 
philosophical  illustrations  and  the  information  which  he 
claims  to  have  received  from  inspiration  ;  or  things  revealed 
to  him  by  the  Almighty  through  the  Holy  Spirit.  He 
expresses  himself  in  terms  level  to  the  apprehension  of 
those  whom  he  is  addressing ;  and  in  this  use  of  terms  he 
does  just  what  we  do  when  we  speak  of  a  natural  body  and 
a  spiritual  body.  He  puts  the  existence  of  the  natural 
body  hypothetically : 

*^  If  there  is  a  natural  body,  there  is  also  a  spiritual 
body."  *  Paraphrased  as  the  whole  passage  may  be,  he 
says,  ''You  well  know  that  there  is  a  natural  body,  and  I 
tell  you  that  there  is  also  a  spiritual  body."  Laying  aside 
the  mode  in  which  the  spiritual  body  is  to  be  manifested  at 
and  after  the  resurrection,  we  have  to  consider  whether, 
during  this  life,  there  is  a  bodily  organism  and  a  mental 
organism,  distinct  in  their  natures,  but  united  for  a  time 
by  a  bond  which  is  hidden  from  our  detection. 

*  In  the  "  authorized  "  version  the  passage  is  rendered  thus  :  "  Xhere  is 
a  natural  body,  and  there  is  a  spiritual  body."  Sophereus  quotes  the  late 
revised  version.  The  meaning  is  the  same.  St.  Paul  assumes  the  exist- 
ence of  a  natural  body,  and  then  asserts  that  there  is  likewise  a  spiritual 
body. 


470  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

I  have  used  the  term  anatomy  of  the  mind,  from  the 
same  necessity  which  compels  me  to  speak  of  the  substance 
of  mind.  You  will  understand  that,  when  I  speak  of  ana- 
tomical examination  of  the  mind,  I  mean  that  analysis 
of  its  structure  which  we  can  make  by  the  use  of  the  ap- 
propriate means,  and  which  enables  us  to  conceiye  that  it 
is  an  organized  structure  of  a  peculiar  character. 

The  grand  difficulty  with  Mr.  Spencer's  "  Psychology  " 
is,  that  after  he  has  made  what  he  calls  "the  proximate 
components  of  mind  "  to  consist  of  "  two  broadly  contrasted 
kinds — feelings  and  the  relations  between  feelings,"  which 
are  mere  impressions  produced  on  the  nerve-center  by 
molecular  changes  in  the  fluid  or  semi-fluid  substance  of 
the  nerves,  he  has  not  approached  to  a  solution  of  the  ques- 
tion whether  there  is  or  is  not  a  something  to  which  these 
feelings  and  the  relations  between  them  suggest  ideas,  and 
which  holds  ideas  continuously  for  future  use. 

Thus  he  makes  consciousness  to  consist  in  passing 
groups  of  feelings  and  their  relations,  and  not  in  a  conscious 
subject.  He  denies  that  there  is  any  ego,  in  the  sense  in 
which  every  person  is  conscious  of  a  self,  and  maintains  that 
the  only  substantive  existence  is  the  unknown  ligament 
which  holds  together  the  ever-changing  states  of  feelings 
and  impressions  produced  in  the  nerve-center.  There  is  a 
far  better  method  of  investigation.  It  is  to  inquire  into  the 
fabric  of  the  mind  as  an  organism,  by  determining  whether 
mental  phenomena  justify  us  in  the  conclusion  that  it  is  an 
organism.  In  this  way  we  may  reach  a  satisfactory  con- 
clusion that  the  mind  is  a  substantive  existence,  possessing 
a  uniform  structure,  of  a  character,  however,  fundamentally 
different  from  the  bodily  structure ;  and  in  this  way  we 
may  be  able  to  explain,  wholly  or  in  part,  how  the  mind 
and  the  body  act  on  and  with  each  other  so  long  as  the 
connection  is  maintained. 

I  am  entirely  free  to  acknowledge  that,  when  I  speak 


MENTAL  ANATOMY.  471 

of  the  substance  of  mind,  or  speak  of  it  as  an  organism,  I 
am  and  must  remain  ignorant  of  the  nature  of  its  substance 
beyond  the  point  where  its  self-manifestations  cease.  But 
the  question  is,  whether  we  are  not  under  an  irresistible 
necessity  of  adopting  as  a  postulate  the  existence  of  a  some- 
thing which  has  certain  inherent  powers,  and  whether  the 
mental  phenomena,  the  self-manifestations  of  those  powers, 
do  not  necessarily  lead  us  to  the  conception  and  conviction 
that  mind  is  a  substantive  existence.  I  can  not  talk  or 
think  of  consciousness  apart  from  a  conscious  subject,  or 
of  feelings  without  a  subject  that  feels.  A  thread  of  con- 
sciousness, or  a  series  of  feelings,  conveys  no  meaning  to 
me,  apart  from  a  being  who  has  the  consciousness  and  per- 
ceives the  feelings.* 

One  very  important  question  to  be  considered  in  all  such 
investigations  is,  Whether  our  experience  does  not  teach 

*  I  have  met,  by  the  kindness  of  the  author,  with  a  little  treatise  which 
contains  a  great  deal  of  sound  mental  philosophy,  with  which  in  the  main  I 
concur,  and  to  which  I  am  indebted  for  some  very  valuable  suggestions. 
This  modest  little  book  is  entitled  "  The  Heart  of  Man :  An  Attempt  in  Men- 
tal Anatomy."  The  author  is  Mr.  P.  P.  Bishop,  a  resident  of  San  Mateo, 
in  Florida.  It  was  printed  at  Chicago,  by  Shepard  &  Johnson,  for  the 
author,  in  1883.  I  know  not  if  it  is  on  sale.  I  suppose  that  Mr.  Bishop 
was  led  to  send  me  his  interesting  treatise  by  the  publication,  in  the  "  Man- 
hattan Magazine,"  at  New  York,  in  1884,  of  the  substance  of  the  first 
three  chapters  of  the  present  work.  I  take  this  opportunity  of  expressing 
my  high  appreciation  of  his  treatise,  and  of  explaining  the  meaning  of  its 
title.  As  I  understand  him,  he  uses  the  term  "  Heart  of  Man  "  as  synony- 
mous with  structure  of  the  mind,  and  not  as  referring  to  what  is  figuratively 
called  "  the  human  heart."  He  has  explained  "  Mental  Anatomy  "  as  fol- 
lows :  "  The  method  of  investigation,  which  I  have  employed  in  making  my 
way  to  the  conclusions  set  forth  in  this  discussion,  I  call  '  The  Anatomical 
Method,'  because  it  is  based  on  the  conception  of  mind  as  an  organized 
being,  and  aims  to  discover  the  structure  of  that  being."  ...  "At  the  risk," 
he  adds,  "  of  appearing  egotistical,  I  think  it  best  to  relate  an  experience." 
He  did  not  need  to  deprecate  the  appearance  of  egotism,  for  his  method  of 
investigation,  based  on  his  own  mental  experience,  was  the  very  best  that  he 


472  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

us  that  we  are  mentally  so  constituted  that  certain  concep- 
tions are  necessary  to  ns  ?  Our  mental  nature  is  placed 
under  certain  laws,  as  our  physical  or  corporeal  nature  is 
placed  under  certain  other  laws.  One  of  these  necessary 
conceptions,  which  are  imposed  on  us,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
by  a  law  of  our  mental  constitution,  is  a  conception  of  the 
fundamental  difference  between  matter  and  spirit.  In  what 
way  is  it  forced  upon  us  that  there  is  a  natural  world  and 
a  spiritual  world  ?  The  phenomena  of  matter  and  the  phe- 
nomena of  mind  are  essentially  different.  In  ourselves  they 
occur  in  conjunction,  and  they  occur  in  disjunction.  They 
are  manifested  synchronously,  and  they  are  manifested 
separately  in  point  of  time.  The  normal  action  of  all  the 
functions  of  the  body  is  not  necessary  to  the  action  of  the 
mind.  The  body  may  be  prostrated  by  disease,  and  the 
moment  of  its  death  may  be  at  hand  ;  yet  the  mind,  to  the 
last  moment  of  the  physical  life,  may  be  unclouded,  and 
its  manifestations  may  be  as  perfect  as  they  ever  were  in  the 
full  health  and  activity  of  the  vital  functions  of  the  body. 
No  one  who  stands  at  a  death-bed  where  this  phenomenon 
occurs,  and  observes  how  completely  the  mind  is  master  of 
itself ;  how  it  holds  in  consciousness  the  past  and  the  pres- 
ent ;  how  it  essays  to  grasp  the  future  for  those  whom  it 
is  to  leave  and  for  itself,  can  easily  escape  the  conviction 
that  death  is  nothing  but  the  dissolution  of  the  bond  which 
has  hitherto  held  together  the  two  existences  that  consti- 
tuted the  human  being,  one  of  which  is  to  be  dissolved  into 
its  elemental  and  material  substances,  and  the  other  of 
which  is  to  go  elsewhere,  intact  and  indestructible. 

could  have  followed.  It  were  to  be  wished  that  we  could  have  more  of  this 
kind  of  self -analysis  by  persons  competent  to  make  it,  and  less  of  theoreti- 
cal reasoning  from  premises  more  or  less  arbitrarily  assumed. 

I  have  endeavored  to  make  my  imaginary  philosopher,  Sophereus,  avoid 
the  method  of  reasoning  which  I  thus  condemn,  and  to  keep  him  within  the 
bounds  of  experience. 


PHENOMENA  OF  COMPOSITION.  473 

Let  me  now  refer  to  what  is  taking  place  while  I  am 
writing  this  essay.  I  have  said  that  the  phenomena  of  our 
bodily  organism  and  the  phenomena  of  our  mental  organ- 
ism may  occur  synchronously  in  the  same  individual.  The 
act  of  writing  an  original  composition  is  an  instance  of  this. 
The  action  of  certain  organs  of  the  body  and  the  action  of 
the  mind  are  simultaneous.  In  time,  they  can  not  be  sep- 
arated. In  themselves,  they  are  separable  and  separate. 
The  thought  springing  up  in  the  mind  may  be  retained 
there,  or  may  flow  into  language  and  be  written  by  the  hand 
upon  the  page.  No  one  can  detect  in  himself  any  instant 
of  time  when  the  mental  formation  of  a  sentence,  or  any 
clause  of  a  sentence,  as  he  writes,  is  separable  from  the 
physical  act  of  writing.  In  that  not  very  common,  but  still 
possible,  feat  of  dictating  to  two  amanuenses,  at  what  ap- 
pears to  be  the  same  time,  on  two  distinct  subjects,  there 
is  undoubtedly  an  appreciable  interval,  in  which  the  mind 
passes  from  one  subject  to  the  other,  and  then  back  again, 
with  great  rapidity.  But,  when  one  is  one's  own  aman- 
uensis, when  the  act  of  thinking  and  formulating  the 
thought,  and  the  act  of  writing  it  down  in  words,  is  per- 
formed by  the  same  person,  there  is  a  simultaneous  action 
of  that  which  originates  the  thought  and  clothes  it  in  words, 
and  the  act  of  the  bodily  organ  which  inscribes  the  words 
upon  paper.  How  is  this  phenomenon  to  be  explained  ? 
And  to  what  does  it  lead  ?  Is  there  anything  in  the  whole 
range  of  Mr.  Spencer's  "  Psychology  "  that  will  interpret 
this  familiar  experience  ?  May  it  not  be  interpreted  by 
an  anatomical  examination  of  the  mind  as  an  organism  ? 

I  do  not  now  refer  to  cases  where  a  thought  is  complete- 
ly formulated  before  the  pen  begins  to  be  moved  over  the 
paper,  and  is  then  recalled  by  an  effort  of  the  memory  and 
written  down.  I  am  referring  to  what  I  suppose  is  the 
habit  of  many  persons  in  writing,  namely,  the  origination 
and  formulation  of  the  thought  as  the  hand  moves  the  pen, 


474:  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

a  habit  of  which  most  practiced  writers  are  perfectly  con- 
scious. The  same  thing  occurs  in  what  is  truly  called  ex- 
temporaneous speaking,*  when  oral  discourse  is  not  a  mere 
repetition,  7nemoriter,  of  thoughts  and  sentences  which  had 
been  previously  formulated,  but,  as  the  word  extemporane- 
ous implies,  when  the  thought  and  the  language  flow  from 
the  vocal  organs  eo  instanti  with  their  conception.  In 
these  and  the  similar  cases  of  improvisation  and  animated 
conversation,  in  which  there  is  a  synchronous  action  of  the 
mind  and  the  bodily  organs,  it  would  be  impossible  for  us 
to  have  that  action  if  mind  were  constituted  as  Mr.  Spencer 
supposes  it  to  be.  If  there  were  no  mind  in  the  sense  of 
an  organized  entity,  conceiving  a  thought  and  clothing  it 
in  the  language  needful  to  give  it  written  or  oral  expression, 
"if  the  ego  were  nothing  more  than  the  passing  group  of 
feelings  and  ideas" — if  an  **^idea  lasts  (only)  while  the 
nerves  of  molecular  motion  last,  ceasing  when  they  cease  " 
— ^if  that  which  remains  is  (only)  the  "  set  of  plexuses  " — 
how  could  we  originate  any  new  thought  ?  The  very  illus- 
tration to  which  Mr.  Spencer  resorts,  when  he  likens  the 
automatic  human  being  to  the  non-automatic  piano,  and 
makes  them  analogous  in  their  action,  in  order  to  show 
that  passing  ideas  do  not  have  a  continual  existence  in  the 
mind,  but  that  the  actual  existence  is  the  physical  struct- 
ure which,  under  like  conditions,  again  evolves  like  com- 
binations, reduces  us  at  once  to  the  level  of  the  piano,  and 
precludes  the  potentiality  of  a  new  and  original  idea  which 

*  "  Extemporaneous,"  Latin,  ex,  from ;  and  tempus,  time,  at  the  same 
time,  or  from  the  same  time.  Extemporaneous  discourse  is  when  the  thought 
and  the  expression  in  which  it  is  clothed  occur  at  the  time  it  is  uttered,  or 
without  premeditation  of  both  thought  and  language.  "Improvisation" 
means  the  same  thing,  but  it  is  specially  applied  to  the  act  of  making  po- 
etry or  performing  music  extemporaneously,  that  is,  without  prevision  of 
what  one  is  to  say  or  sing.  Rapid  conversation  is  of  the  same  nature.  So 
is  an  instantaneous  and  unpremeditated  answer  to  a  question. 


MECHANICAL  INVENTION.  475 

is  not  a  combination  of  former  ideas,  and  is  produced  under 
different  conditions.  The  assertion  or  argument  that  each 
set  of  plexuses  is  capable  of  entering  into  countless  com- 
binations with  others,  and  so  renders  possible  future  ideas, 
does  not  advance  us  one  step  to  the  solution  of  what  takes 
place  when  we  conceive  a  new  thought,  clothe  it  in  lan- 
guage, and  write  it  down  on  paper,  or  give  it  oral  expres- 
sion. 

In  justilScation  of  this  criticism,  let  me  now  refer  to  that 
intellectual  process  which  is  called  *^  invention,"  in  its  ap- 
plication to  the  mechanic  arts.  I  do  not  mean  to  suggest 
or  to  claim  that  this  kind  of  invention  is  an  act  which  is 
to  be  referred  to  a  distinct  and  peculiar  faculty  of  certain 
minds,  in  the  possession  of  which  one  man  may  differ  from 
another.  But  I  shall  endeavor  to  describe  what  takes  place 
when  one  conceives  the  intellectual  plan  of  a  certain  new 
combination  of  mechanical  devices,  and  embodies  that  plan 
in  a  machine  which  differs  from  all  other  previous  machines 
in  its  characteristic  method  of  operation.  For  convenience, 
I  shall  speak  of  the  person  who  produces  such  a  machine 
as  the  inventor,  which  is  the  same  as  speaking  of  him  as 
the  maker,  as  the  poet  is  the  maker  of  a  poem.  This  act 
of  invention,  or  the  making  of  some  concrete  new  thing,  is 
an  act  of  creation.  The  inventor,  then,  may  be  supposed 
to  have  learned  all  that  empirical  and  all  that  scientific 
mechanics  could  teach  him ;  to  have  had  any  quantity  of 
passing  groups  of  ideas  pass  through  his  consciousness  ;  to 
be  possessed  of  any  number  of  plexuses  capable  of  entering 
into  countless  combinations  with  others.  These  plexuses,  or 
networks  of  transitory  ideas,  consisting  of  former  impres- 
sions in  the  nerve-center,  must,  it  is  said,  be  recalled  under 
the  like  conditions  which  produced  them.  But  the  condi- 
tions for  the  inventor  are  not  the  same.  Something  is  to  be 
produced  into  which  the  old  ideas  do  not  enter.  There  is 
to  be  a  new  arrangement  of  old  mechanical  devices  ;  a  new 


476  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

combination  is  to  be  made,  wbicb  will  possess  a  method  of 
operation  and  accomplish  a  result  never  before  seen  or  ob- 
tained. A  new  concrete  thing,  a  new  machine,  is  to  be 
created.  That  the  conception  must  be  formed,  that  the 
objective  point,  to  which  the  whole  intellectual  effort  is  to 
aim,  must  be  seen,  is  manifest.  A  tentative  intellectual 
process  may  have  to  be  gone  through  before  the  full  con- 
ception is  reached,  just  as  a  tentative  experimental  process 
may  be  necessary  in  finding  out  how  the  practical  embodi- 
ment of  the  conception  is  to  be  reached  in  building  the 
structure.  These  processes  may  go  on  simultaneously  or 
separately ;  but,  when  they  are  both  completed,  when  the 
new  machine  stands  before  us,  we  see  at  once  that  the  plan 
is  an  intellectual  conception,  perfectly  original,  and  the 
physical  structure  is  a  new  arrangement  of  matter  effected 
by  the  hand  of  the  inventor  or  by  the  hands  of  others, 
which  he  uses  as  his  instruments  in  doing  the  physical 
work.  I  do  not  know,  therefore,  how  this  phenomenon  is 
to  be  explained  upon  the  theory  that  the  only  ego  is  the 
body  and  its  functions,  which  lies  behind  and  determines 
ever-changing  states  of  consciousness.  I  know  not  how  else 
to  interpret  the  phenomenon  of  invention,  excepting  to 
adopt  the  postulate  that  there  is  a  mind,  a  substantive  ex- 
istence, which,  while  its  consciousness  holds  ideas  suggested 
by  former  conditions,  has  the  inherent  power  to  originate 
ideas  that  did  not  form  a  part  of  any  previous  state  of  con- 
sciousness. 

I  have  spoken  of  mind  as  an  organism  and  as  a  substan- 
tive existence.  Tbis  is  a  deduction  to  be  drawn  from  the 
manifestations  of  mental  phenomena.  In  order  to  guard 
against  an  objection  that  may  possibly  be  interposed  in  the 
way  of  this  method  of  investigation,  I  will  anticipate  and 
answer  it.  It  will  be  said  that  we  can  not  define  or  describe 
the  substance  of  mind  ;  can  not  tell  whether  it  is  a  unit,  in 
itself,  or  an  aggregate  of  units ;  we  know  and  can  know 


MATTER  AND  SPIRIT.  477 

nothing  more  than  its  approximate  components,  and  all 
that  we  know  of  these  does  not  justify  us  in  assuming  to 
speak  of  the  substance  of  miud.  I  have  more  than  once 
suggested,  in  our  former  conferences,  that  our  inability  to 
define  and  to  describe  the  substance  of  auy  supposed  ex- 
istence is  no  proper  objection  to  the  hypothesis  that  there 
is  such  an  existence.  When  we  undertake  to  define  mat- 
ter, or  to  describe  the  substance  of  that  which  we  call  mat- 
ter, we  find  that  we  soon  reach  a  point  where  precise  defini- 
tion or  description  ceases.  Yet  we  do  not  for  that  reason 
refrain  from  deducing  the  existence  of  matter  from  the 
manifestations  of  certain  phenomena  and  from  our  experi- 
ence with  them.  It  is  perfectly  true  that  we  know  matter 
only  by  the  manifestations  of  certain  physical  phenomena ; 
that  we  can  not  define  the  nature  of  its  substance.  All  we 
can  do,  by  the  most  minute  analysis,  is  to  arrive  at  the  percep- 
tion of  the  ultimate  particles  or  units  of  matter  ;  and  the 
nature  of  the  substance  of  which  these  units  are  composed  is 
incapable  of  any  further  description.  '^  Matter  "  *  is  one  of 
the  words  in  the  English  language  which  are  used  in  a  great 
variety  of  senses,  exact  and  inexact,  literal  and  figurative. 
In  its  philosophical  sense,  meaning  the  substance  of  which 
all  physical  bodies  are  composed,  the  efforts  of  lexicographers 
to  give  a  definition,  descriptive  of  the  nature  of  what  is  de- 
fined, show  that  definition  is,  strictly  speaking,  impossible. 
All  that  can  be  said  is  that  matter  is  "  substance  extended  "  ; 
or  that  which  is  visible  or  tangible,  as  "  earth,  wood,  stone, 
air,  vapor,  water"  ;  or  'Hhe  substance  of  which  all  bodies 
are  composed."  But  these  efforts  at  definition  express 
only  what  is  needful  to  be  expressed  in  contrasting  matter 
with  that  other  existence  which  is  called  "spirit."  This 
is  another  word  which  is  used  in  very  different  senses,  but 
of  which  no  more  exact  definition  can  be  given,  when  it  is 
used  in  its  philosophical  sense,  than  can  be  given  of  *'  mat- 

*  Webster's  Dictionary — "  Matter." 


478  CREATION  OE  EVOLUTION? 

ter."  Lexicographers  have  defined  "spirit,"  in  one  of 
its  meanings,  as  *Hhe  soul  of  man  ;  the  intelligent,  imma- 
terial, and  immortal  part  of  human  beings " ;  and  in  an- 
other of  its  meanings,  more  broadly,  as  '^  an  immaterial, 
intelligent  substance."  In  these  definitions  they  have  fol- 
lowed the  metaphysicians,  and  the  uses  of  the  word  in  the 
English  translation  of  the  Bible.  When  we  turn  to  the 
definition  of  "soul,"  we  find  it  given  as  "the  spiritual  and 
immortal  substance  in  man,  which  distinguishes  him  from 
brutes  ;  that  part  of  man  which  enables  him  to  think  and 
reason,  and  which  renders  him  a  subject  of  moral  govern- 
ment." We  also  have  it  defined  as  "the  understanding, 
the  intellectual  principle."  Undoubtedly  these  definitions 
involve  certain  assumptions,  such  as  the  existence  of  a  sub- 
stance called  spirit,  and  the  existence  of  an  intellectual 
principle,  of  which  "soul,"  "spirit,"  and  "intellect"  are 
mere  names.  But  there  is  no  difficulty  in  the  way  of  our 
knowing  what  is  meant  when  these  terms  are  used.  The 
difficulty  of  giving  a  definiton  without  a  circuitous  use  of 
terms,  explaining  the  one  by  the  other,  and  then  explain- 
ing the  last  by  the  first,  does  not  prevent  us  from  having 
a  definite  conception  of  the  thing  spoken  of.  When  we 
speak  of  mind,  soul,  or  intellect,  what  we  think  of  is  the 
something  in  ourselves  of  which  we  are  conscious,  and 
whose  manifestations  we  observe  in  other  beings  like  our- 
selves ;  and  what  we  have  to  do  is  to  examine  the  evidence 
which  may  bring  home  to  our  convictions  the  existence  of 
this  something  that  perceives,  thinks,  acts,  originates  new 
ideas;  holds  former  ideas  in  consciousness,  is  connected 
with  and  acts  upon  and  is  acted  on  by  bodily  organs,  and 
is  at  the  same  time  more  than  and  different  from  those  or- 
gans. 

I  have  referred  to  some  of  the  mental  phenomena  which 
have  the  strongest  tendency  to  prove  the  existence  of  the 
mind  as  an  organized  entity.     These  are  the  phenomena 


THE  PHENOMENA  OF  SLEEP.  4.Y9 

which  occur  in  our  waking  hours,  when  the  intellectual 
faculties  and  the  bodily  organs .  are  in  the  full  exercise  of 
their  normal  functions  respectively.  There  is  another 
class  of  mental  phenomena  which  may  be  said  to  be  ab- 
normal, in  this,  that  the  intellectual  faculties  and  the  bod- 
ily organs  do  not  preserve  the  same  relations  to  each  other 
in  all  respects  that  they  do  when  we  are  fully  awake. 
These  are  the  phenomena  that  occur  during  sleep — a  class 
of  mental  phenomena  of  great  consequence  to  be  observed 
and  analyzed  in  any  study  of  psychology.  They  are  of  an 
extraordinary  variety,  complex  in  the  highest  degree,  and 
dependent  on  numerous  causes  of  mental  and  physical  dis- 
turbance ;  but  it  is  quite  possible  to  extract  from  some  of 
them  certain  definite  conclusions. 

Sleep,  properly  regarded,  when  it  is  perfect,  is  a  state 
of  absolute  rest  and  inactivity  of  all  the  organs  and  func- 
tions of  the  body  save  the  digestion  of  food  and  the  circu- 
lation of  the  blood,  and  of  all  the  mental  faculties.  Per- 
fect sleep,  sleep  in  which  there  is  absolutely  no  conscious- 
ness, is  more  rare  than  those  states  in  which  there  is  more 
or  less  consciousness.  But  it  is  often  an  actual  state  of 
both  body  and  mind,  and  it  was  evidently  designed  to  re- 
new the  vigor  of  both,  and  to  prevent  the  wear  and  tear  of 
unbroken  activity.  Between  absolute  unconsciousness  in- 
duced by  perfect  sleep  and  the  full  consciousness  of  our 
waking  moments,  there  are  many  intermediate  states  ;  and 
the  phenomena  of  these  intermediate  states  present  very 
strong  proofs  of  the  existence  of  the  mind  as  a  special 
and  spiritual  entity,  capable  in  greater  or  less  degree  of 
acting  without  the  aid  of  the  physical  organs.  I  do  not  ex- 
cept even  the  organ  of  the  brain  from  this  suspension  of 
action  during  certain  states  when  the  mind  is  in  more  or 
less  of  activity ;  for  I  am  convinced  that  in  some  of  the 
mental  phenomena  to  which  I  shall  advert  and  which  I 
shall  endeavor  to  describe,  the  brain  is  in  a  state  of  perfect 


480  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

sleep,  and  that  in  the  production  of  those  phenomena  it 
takes  no  part.  In  other  mental  phenomena,  which  occur 
during  sleep,  the  brain  or  some  part  of  it  is  evidently 
acted  upon  by  the  mind,  as  in  the  somnambulistic  condi- 
tion, when  the  nerves  of  motion,  responding  to  the  action 
of  the  mind,  communicate  action  to  the  muscles,  and  the 
body  walks  about  and  performs  other  external  acts. 

There  are  other  mental  phenomena  occurring  during 
very  profound  sleep  of  the  body  and  its  organs,  when  the 
mind  does  not  appear  to  derive  its  action  from  the  brain, 
or  to  be  dependent  on  the  brain  for  its  activity  ;  when  it 
is  exceedingly  active,  and  when  it  communicates  action  to 
none  of  the  bodily  organs  ;  when,  for  example,  it  carries  on 
long  trains  of  thought,  composes  sentences,  invents  con- 
versations, makes  poetry  and  prose,  and  performs  other 
intellectual  processes.  Distributed  into  classes,  the  most 
important  mental  phenomena  occurring  during  sleep  are 
the  following  : 

Eirst,  and  presenting  perhaps  the  strongest  proof  of  the 
mind's  independence  of  all  the  bodily  organs,  is  that  whole 
class  of  mental  j)henomena  in  which,  during  profound 
sleep  of  the  body,  we  carry  on  conversations,  compose  origi- 
nal matter  in  the  form  of  oral  or  written  discourse,  which 
we  seem  to  ourselves  to  be  producing,  and  solve  intellectual 
difficulties  which  have  baffled  us  when  awake,  or  imagine 
that  we  receive  from  an  unexpected  source  important  in- 
formation that  we  are  not  conscious  of  having  previously 
received. 

The  phenomena  of  conversations,  to  which  we  appear 
to  ourselves  to  be  listening  during  sleep,  or  in  which  we  ap- 
pear to  ourselves  to  be  taking  part,  are,  when  analyzed,  most 
remarkable  occurrences,  for  it  is  the  mind  of  the  sleeper 
which  originates  the  whole  of  what  appears  to  be  said  by 
different  persons.  These  conversations  are  as  vivid,  as 
much  marked  by  different  intellectual  and  personal  charac- 


COir^ESATIONS  DUEING  SLEEP.  481 

teristics,  sudden  and  unexpected  turns,  apt  repartee,  inter- 
change of  ideas  between  two  or  more  persons,  as  are  the 
real  conversations  which  we  overhear,  or  in  which  we  take 
part,  when  we  are  awake.  Yet  the  whole  of  what  is  said, 
or  appears  to  us  to  be  said,  is  the  invention  of  the  one  mind, 
which  appears  to  itself  to  be  listening  to  or  talking  with 
other  minds,  and  all  the  while  the  body  is  wrapped  in  pro- 
found sleep.  This  extraordinary  intellectual  feat,  so  familiar 
to  us  that  it  scarcely  attracts  our  attention  unless  we  under- 
take to  analyze  it,  is  closely  akin  to  the  action  of  the  mind 
when  the  body  and  the  mind  are  neither  of  them  asleep,  and 
when  we  invent  a  conversation  between  different  persons. 
But  this  occurrence  is  marked  by  another  extraordinary  pe- 
culiarity :  for  it  happens,  during  sleep,  to  persons  who  could 
not,  when  awake,  invent  and  write  such  conversations  at 
will,  and  who  in  their  waking  hours  have  very  little  of  the 
imaginative  faculty  needed  for  such  productions.  I  ac- 
count for  this  phenomenon  by  the  hypothesis  that  when  the 
mind  is  free  from  the  necessity  of  depending  on  the  bodily 
organs  for  its  action,  as  it  is  during  profound  sleep  of  the 
body,  when  its  normal  relations  with  the  body  are  com- 
pletely suspended  and  it  is  left  to  its  independent  action,  it 
has  a  power  of  separate  action.  This,  I  think,  accounts  for 
a  kind  of  mental  action  which,  when  compared  with  that 
which  occurs  in  conjunction  with  the  action  of  the  bodily 
organs,  may  be  called  abnormal.  Under  the  impulse  of  its 
own  unrestrained  and  uncorrected  activity,  the  mind  goes 
through  processes  of  invention,  the  products  of  which  are 
sometimes  wild  and  incoherent,  sometimes  exceedingly  co- 
herent, sensible,  and  apt.  Let  the  person  to  whom  this 
occurs  be  thoroughly  awakened  out  of  one  of  these  states, 
and  the  mind  becomes  immediately  again  subjected  to  the 
necessity  of  acting  along  with,  and  under  the  conditions  of 
its  normal  relations  to  the  body. 

Akin  to  this  mental  feat  of  inventing  conversations. 


482  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

during  a  sleep  of  the  body,  is  the  power  of  composing,  dur- 
ing such  sleep,  oral  discourse  of  one's  own,  or  the  power  of 
composing  something  which  we  appear  to  ourselves  to  be 
writing.  I  suppose  this  is  an  occurrence  which  happens  to 
most  persons  who  are  much  accustomed  to  writing  or  to 
public  speaking.  It  is  often  an  involuntary  action  of  the 
mind ;  that  is  to  say,  it  is  sometimes  accompanied  with  a 
distinct  consciousness  that  it  is  a  process  that  ought  to  be 
arrested  because  it  is  a  dangerous  one,  and  yet  it  can  not 
be  arrested  before  full  waking  consciousness  returns.  On 
goes  the  flow  of  thought  and  language,  apparently  with 
great  success  ;  we  seem  to  be  speaking  or  writing  with  even 
more  than  our  usual  power,  and  all  the  while  in  the  style 
that  belongs  to  us  ;  but,  until  we  are  fully  restored  to  the 
normal  relation  of  the  mind  and  the  body,  we  can  not  at  will 
arrest  this  independent  action  of  the  mind,  but  must  wait 
until  our  bodily  senses  are  again  in  full  activity.  I  do  not 
suppose  that  this  phenomenon  ought  to  be  explained  by  the 
hypothesis  that  there  are  certain  parts  or  organs  of  the 
brain  which  are  specially  concerned  in  the  work  of  origi- 
nal composition  of  intellectual  matter,  and  that  these  or- 
gans are  not  affected  by  the  sleep  that  is  prevailing  in  other 
parts  of  the  brain.  While  it  is  doubtless  true  that  there 
are  special  systems  of  nerves  which  proceed  from  or  con- 
duct to  special  parts  of  the  brain,  and  by  which  action  is 
imparted  to  or  received  from  the  other  organs  of  the  body, 
and  while  some  of  these  special  parts  of  the  brain  may  be 
in  the  state  of  absolute  inactivity  called  sleep,  and  others 
are  not,  I  know  of  no  warrant  for  the  hypothesis  that  the 
intellectual  operations  or  processes  are  dependent  upon  any 
particular  organ  or  organs  of  the  brain,  as  distinguished 
from  those  from  and  to  which  proceed  special  systems  of 
nerves.  If  any  person,  who  is  much  accustomed  to  that 
kind  of  intellectual  activity  which  consists  in  original 
composition  of  intellectual  matter,  will  attend  to  his  own 


COMPOSITION  DURmG  SLEEP.  483 

consciousness,  and  probe  it  as  far  as  he  may,  he  will  not 
find  reason,  I  apprehend,  to  conclude  that  the  power  of 
thought  and  of  clothing  thought  in  language  resides  in  any- 
special  part  of  the  brain.  His  experience  and  introspection 
will  be  more  likely  to  lead  him  to  the  conclusion  that  this 
power,  whether  it  is  exerted  when  he  is  asleep  or  awake 
bodily,  is  a  power  that  inheres  in  the  mind  itself  regarded 
as  a  spiritual  existence  and  organism,  and  that  the  action 
of  the  brain,  or  of  any  part  of  it,  is  necessary  to  the  exercise 
of  this  power  only  when  it  is  necessary,  as  it  is  in  our  wak- 
ing moments,  to  use  some  of  the  bodily  organs  in  order  to 
give  the  thought  oral  or  written  expression  by  giving  it 
utterance  through  the  vocal  organs  or  by  writing  it  down 
on  paper.  Certain  it  is  that  we  conceive  thoughts  in  more 
or  less  of  connected  sequence,  and  clothe  them  intellectually 
in  language  of  which  we  have  entire  consciousness  while 
the  process  is  going  on,  without  the  action  of  any  part  of 
the  body. 

It  may  be  objected  to  this  view  that  the  intellectual 
products  which  we  seem  to  ourselves  to  be  making  when 
we  are  asleep  would,  if  they  could  be  repeated  by  an  effort 
of  the  memory,  word  for  word,  just  as  they  seem  to  have 
occurred,  be  found  to  be  of  the  same  incoherent,  senseless 
stuff  of  which  all  dreams  are  made  ;  and  that  this  test 
would  show  that  the  brain  is  at  such  times  not  absolutely 
and  completely  in  the  condition  which  is  called  sleep,  but 
that  it  is  only  partially  in  that  condition ;  that  it  is  per- 
forming its  function  feebly,  imperfectly,  and  not  as  it  per- 
forms that  function  when  the  whole  body  is  awake.  In 
reference  to  this  hypothesis,  I  will  repeat  an  anecdote  which 
I  have  somewhere  read,  which  is  equally  valuable  whether 
it  was  an  imaginary  or  a  real  occurrence. 

A  gentleman  of  literary  pursuits,  who  was  a  very  re- 
spectable poet,  was  subject  to  this  habit  of  composition 
during  sleep.  One  night  he  awoke  his  wife  and  informed 
22 


484  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

her  that  he  had  composed  in  his  dream  some  of  the  best 
and  most  original  verses  that  he  had  eyer  written.  He 
begged  her  at  once  to  get  a  candle,  pen,  ink,  and  paper, 
and  let  him  dictate  to  her  the  new  composition  that  ap- 
peared to  him  so  striking.  When  they  read  together  the 
new  poem  on  the  next  morning,  it  turned  out  to  be  non- 
sensically puerile.  But  occurrences  of  this  kind,  if  they 
could  be  multiplied,  would  prove  only  that  we  are  liable  to 
illusions  in  sleep,  in  regard  to  the  comparative  merits  of 
our  intellectual  products,  which  we  imagine  ourselves  to  be 
creating  when  we  are  in  that  state,  as  we  are  in  regard  to 
other  things.  We  are  under  a  delusion  when  we  imagine 
in  our  dreams  that  we  encounter  and  converse  with  another 
person,  living  or  dead.  We  are  perhaps  deluding  ourselves 
when  in  sleep  we  compose  or  seem  to  compose  an  original 
poem.  But  what  is  it  that  deludes  itself,  either  in  respect 
to  the  interview  with  another  person,  or  in  respect  to  the 
new  composition  ?  Is  it  the  brain,  or  is  it  the  mind  ?  Is 
it  a  person,  or  a  bodily  organ  that  has  the  false  impression, 
in  the  one  case  or  the  other  ?  There  must  be  a  something 
that  is  subject  to  an  illusion,  before  there  can  be  an  illusion. 
If  both  brain  and  mind  are  in  profound  sleep,  absolute  sus- 
pension of  all  action,  there  can  be  no  illusion  about  any- 
thing. If  the  brain  is  absolutely  asleep  and  the  mind  is 
not,  the  illusion  is  in  the  mind  and  not  in  the  brain.  That 
the  latter  is  what  often  occurs,  the  experience  of  the  illit- 
erate and  uncultivated  makes  them  aware,  as  well  as  the 
experience  of  the  lettered  scholar  and  the  practiced  writer.* 
Under  the  same  head,  I  will  now  refer  to  those  strange 
but  familiar  occurrences  which  take  place  when  there  come 
to  us,  in  sleep,  solutions  of  difiSculties  which  we  had  not 

*  **  And  it  shall  be  as  when  a  hungry  man  dreameth,  and  behold,  he 
eateth :  but  he  awaketh,  and  his  soul  is  empty ;  or  as  when  a  thirsty  man 
dreameth,  and  behold,  he  drinkcth :  but  he  awaketh,  and  behold,  he  is 
faint,  and  his  soul  hath  appetite." — Isaiah. 


NEW  THOUGHTS  DURING  SLEEP.  485 

overcome  by  all  our  efforts  while  awake,  and  whicli  appeared 
to  us  utterly  dark  when  we  lay  down  to  rest.  These  men- 
tal phenomena  are  almost  innumerably  various.  They  take 
place  in  regard  to  all  kinds  of  subjects,  to  lines  of  conduct 
and  action,  to  everything  about  which  our  thoughts  are  em- 
ployed ;  and  they  are  a  class  of  phenomena  within  every- 
body's experience.  There  is  scarcely  any  one  to  whom  it 
has  not  happened  to  lie  down  at  night  with  a  mind  dis- 
tressed and  perplexed  about  some  problem  that  requires  a 
definite  solution,  and  to  rise  in  the  morning,  usually  after 
a  night  of  undisturbed  rest,  with  his  mind  perfectly  clear 
on  the  subject,  and  with  just  the  solution  that  did  not 
come  to  him  when  he  devoted  to  it  all  his  waking  thoughts. 
"What  is  the  explanation  of  this  phenomenon  ?  If  the  mind 
is  an  independent  entity,  a  spiritual  organism,  capable  of 
its  own  action  without  the  aid  of  the  body  under  certain 
circumstances,  this  phenomenon  can  be  explained.  If  the 
mind  is  not  a  spiritual  organism,  capable,  under  any  cir- 
cumstances, of  acting  without  the  aid  of  the  bodily  organs, 
this  phenomenon  can  not  be  explained. 

The  most  probable  explanation  is  this  :  When  we  are 
awake,  and  devote  our  thoughts  to  a  particular  subject  that 
is  attended  with  great  difficulties,  we  go  over  the  same 
ground  repeatedly— the  mind  travels  and  toils  in  the  same 
ruts.  Nothing  new  occurs,  because  we  look  at  the  subject 
in  the  same  way  every  time  we  think  of  it.  We  are  liable 
to  be  kept  in  the  same  beaten  path  by  the  associations  be- 
tween our  thoughts  and  the  bodily  states  in  which  we  have 
those  thoughts — associations  which  are  exceedingly  power- 
ful. But  let  these  associations  be  dissolved  as  they  are 
during  perfect  sleep — let  the  mind  be  in  a  condition  to  act 
without  being  dependent  on  the  brain  or  any  other  bodily 
organ  for  aid,  or  exposed  to  be  hampered  by  the  condi- 
tions of  the  body,  and  there  will  be  a  mental  activity  in 
which  ideas  will  be  wrought  out  that  did  not  occur  to  us 


486  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

while  we  were  awake.  The  memory,  too,  may  recall  a  fact 
which  we  had  learned  while  awake,  and  yet  we  may  be  un- 
able to  recollect  how  it  came  to  our  knowledge.  At  such 
times,  the  fact  is  recalled ;  but  as  the  mind  is  acting  in  a 
condition  which  is  abnormal  when  compared  with  the  wak- 
ing condition,  and  is  liable  to  delusions  about  some  things, 
we  imagine  that  the  fact  is  revealed  to  us  in  some  wild  and 
supernatural  way,  as  by  a  person  who  is  dead  and  who  has 
come  to  us  to  communicate  it.  There  is  a  well-authenti- 
cated account  of  an  occurrence  of  this  kind,  given  by  Sir 
Walter  Scott  in  one  of  the  notes  to  his  "Antiquary,"  and 
on  which  he  founds  an  incident  related  by  one  of  the  per- 
sonages in  his  story.  The  real  occurrence  was  this  :  A  gen- 
tleman in  Scotland  was  involved  in  a  litigation  about  a 
claim  asserted  upon  his  landed  estate.  He  had  a  strong 
conviction  that  his  father  had  bargained  and  paid  for  a  re- 
lease of  the  claim,  but  he  could  find  no  such  paper.  With- 
out it  he  was  sure  to  be  defeated  in  the  suit.  Distressed  by 
this  prospect,  but  utterly  unable  to  see  any  way  out  of  his 
misfortune,  he  lay  down  to  sleep,  on  the  night  before  he 
was  to  go  into  Edinburgh  to  attend  the  trial  of  the  cause. 
He  dreamed  that  his  father  appeared  to  him,  and  told  him 
that  the  claim  had  been  released,  and  that  the  paper  was  in 
the  hands  of  a  lawyer  in  a  neighboring  town,  whose  name 
the  paternal  shade  mentioned. 

Before  going  into  Edinburgh  on  the  next  day,  the  gentle- 
man rode  to  the  place  which  his  father  had  indicated,  and 
found  the  lawyer,  of  whose  name  he  had  been  previously 
unconscious.  This  person  turned  out  to  be  an  old  man, 
who  had  forgotten  the  fact  that  he  had  transacted  this 
piece  of  business  for  the  gentleman's  father  ;  but  on  being 
told  of  the  fact  that  his  client  had  paid  his  fee  in  a  foreign 
coin  of  a  peculiar  character — which  was  one  part  of  the 
story  which  the  father's  apparition  related  to  the  son — ^he 
recalled  the  whole  of  the  circumstances,  searched  for  the 


DELUSIONS  m  SLEEP.  487 

paper,  and  found  it.  The  gentleman's  estate  was  saved  to 
him  ;  hut  he  became  very  superstitious  ahout  dreams,  and 
suffered  much  from  that  cause,  as  was  quite  naturah  Sir 
Walter's  solution  of  the  whole  affair  is  of  course  the  correct 
one  :  "  The  dream  was  only  the  recapitulation  of  informa- 
tion which  Mr.  K had  really  received  from  his  father 

while  in  life,  but  which  at  first  he  merely  recalled  as  a  gen- 
eral impression  that  the  claim  was  settled.  It  is  not  un- 
common for  persons  to  recover,  during  sleep,  the  thread  of 
ideas  which  they  have  lost  during  their  waking  hours. "  * 
Sir  Walter  makes  another  observation  which  is  worthy  of 
being  repeated — that  in  dreams  men  are  not  surprised  by 
apparitions.  Why  are  we  not  ?  Because  the  mind  is  in  a 
state  of  abnormal  activity,  in  which  everything  that  occurs 
to  it  seems  perfectly  natural.  The  delusion  in  regard  to 
the  mode  in  which  the  very  important  fact  was  communi- 
cated to  Mr.  E in  his  dream,  was  substituted  in  the 

place  of  the  actual  communication  made  to  him  by  his 
father  during  life.  The  latter  he  had  wholly  forgotten, 
and  he  had  forgotten  the  circumstance  of  payment  of  the 
lawyer's  fee  in  a  peculiar  coin,  which  had  also  been  men- 
tioned to  him  by  his  father  when  living.  This  remarkable 
incident,  which  might  doubtless  be  paralleled  by  many  simi- 
lar occurrences,  proves  one  of  two  things  :  either  that  the 
exercise  of  the  memory  is  wholly  dependent  upon  a  waking 
condition  of  the  brain,  or  that  there  may  be  an  abnormal 
and  imperfect  act  of  memory  while  the  brain  is  in  profound 
sleep,  in  the  course  of  which  a  fact  becomes  mixed  with  a 
delusion  about  the  mode  in  which  we  are  told  of  the  fact. 

What  happened  to  Mr.  E was  that  his  mind  recalled 

the  fact,  but  imagined  that  he  then  learned  it  for  the  first 
time  from  an  apparition.  I  do  not  know  how  such  a  phe- 
nomenon can  be  explained,  excepting  by  the  hypothesis  that 

*  Scott's  "  Antiquary,"  note  t. 


488  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTIOIST? 

the  mind  is  a  special  existence,  which  acts  during  sleep  of 
the  body  upon  facts  that  are  lodged  in  the  memory,  but 
mixes  them  with  imaginary  and  delusive  appearances,  so 
that  the  mode  in  which  the  fact  was  actually  learned  is  ob- 
literated from  the  memory,  and  some  supernatural  mode  of 
communication  takes  its  place.  On  the  return  of  waking 
consciousness,  the  mode  in  which  the  fact  was  actually 
learned  is  still  shut  out  from  recollection,  and,  if  the  person 
to  whom  this  kind  of  delusion  has  occurred  is  of  a  super- 
stitious turn,  he  will  act  on  what  he  has  imagined  was  told 
him  by  the  apparition,  because  he  has  no  other  means  of 
rescuing  himself  from  an  evil. 

In  regard  to  the  mental  phenomena  which  occur  with- 
out delusions  or  apparitions,  where  the  thoughts  on  a  dif- 
ficult subject  become  clearer  and  more  satisfactory  to  us 
when  we  awake  from  sleep  than  they  ever  were  during  our 
waking  hours,  I  suppose  the  explanation  is  this  :  During 
profound  sleep  of  the  body,  including  the  brain,  there  is 
an  entire  suspension  of  every  bodily  function  excepting 
the  digestion  of  food  and  the  circulation  of  the  blood.  If 
there  is  excited  in  some  of  the  other  organs  an  action  of 
a  peculiar  kind,  by  an  excitation  of  the  nerves  connected 
with  those  organs,  it  is  proof  that  the  condition  of  perfect 
sleep  is  not  prevailing  in  all  parts  of  the  brain.  The  state 
to  which  I  now  refer  supposes  a  complete  inactivity  of  the 
whole  bodily  organism  save  in  the  digestive  function  and 
the  circulation  of  the  blood.  In  such  a  state,  the  mind, 
that  which  thinks  and  reasons,  does  not  act  upon  the  brain, 
and  is  not  acted  upon  by  it.  It  is  capable  of  thinking  on 
any  subject  which  has  employed  its  thoughts  during  the 
waking  hours  ;  and  while,  in  some  cases,  it  is  visited  by  ap- 
paritions and  subject  to  delusions,  it  is  in  other  cases  en- 
gaged in  ideas  that  involve  no  delusive  appearances.  Freed 
from  all  the  associations  of  these  ideas  with  the  feelings  pre- 
vailing in  the  body  when  we  think  of  the  subject  during 


BETTER  THOUGHTS  DURmG  SLEEP.  489 

our  waking  hours,  we  are  able  to  perceive  relations  of  the 
subject  which  have  not  before  occurred  to  us.  When  we 
pass  from  the  condition  of  sleep  to  the  full  consciousness 
of  our  bodily  and  mental  organism,  we  are  intellectually 
possessed  of  these  new  relations  of  the  subject,  which  we 
have  brought  with  us  out  of  the  state  in  which  we  acquired 
them,  and  they  furnish  us  with  new  materials  for  the  solu- 
tion of  the  problem  that  we  had  not  solved  when  we  lay 
down  to  rest.  It  is  not,  I  am  persuaded,  because  the  mind 
was  at  rest  during  sleep,  and  when  we  become  awake  is  by 
reason  of  that  rest  better  able  to  grapple  with  the  difficul- 
ties of  the  subject,  that  we  do  grapple  with  them  success- 
fully ;  for  in  the  case  supposed,  which  is  a  very  common 
experience,  the  thoughts  are  actually  employed  on  the  sub- 
ject, while  the  body  and  the  brain  are  in  the  absolute  rest 
and  inactivity  of  all  the  organic  functions  excepting  those 
of  digestion  and  circulation  of  the  blood.  I  do  not  know 
that  it  is  possible  to  detect,  in  a  person  sleeping,  an  in- 
creased circulation  of  the  blood  to  any  part  of  the  brain 
which  may  be  supposed  to  be  concerned  in  the  act  of  think- 
ing, and  at  the  same  time  to  know  that  thinking  is  going 
on,  unless  such  an  observation  could  be  made  of  a  person 
in  the  state  called  somnambulism,  which  is  not  the  state  of 
which  I  am  now  speaking.  But  reasoning  upon  the  phe- 
nomenon which  I  have  now  described,  according  to  all  that 
we  can  learn  from  our  own  experience  or  from  observation 
of  others,  I  reach  the  conclusion  that  the  mind,  the  think- 
ing and  reasoning  entity,  can  and  does,  in  profound  sleep 
of  the  body  and  the  brain,  employ  itself  upon  a  subject  that 
has  occupied  us  when  awake,  and  can  perceive  new  rela- 
tions of  that  subject,  which  had  not  before  occurred  to  us, 
without  the  activity  of  any  portion  of  the  nerve-center 
which  is  called  the  brain.  Does  this  hypothesis  assume 
that  our  thoughts  when  asleep  are  more  valuable  than  our 
waking  thoughts  ?    It  does,  to  a  certain  extent  and  under 


490  CREATIOi^  OR  EVOLUTION? 

certain  circumstances,  for  experience  proves  that  in  sleep 
we  acquire  ideas  which  we  did  not  have  before  we  fell 
asleep,  and  which  we  bring  with  us  out  of  that  condition. 

That  I  have  now  given  the  true  explanation  of  this  fa- 
miliar experience  will  appear,  I  think,  from  this  considera- 
tion :  There  are  very  few  nights  when  we  do  not  in  sleep 
have  many  thoughts.  The  states  of  perfect  unconscious- 
ness are  comparatively  rare.  If  the  brain  were  never 
entirely  asleep,  if  it  were  always  engaged  in  the  physical 
work  of  thinking — whatever  that  work  may  be — it  would 
be  worn  out  prematurely.  But  if  the  brain  is  perfectly  at 
rest,  while  the  mind  is  actively  employed,  the  brain  under- 
goes no  strain  and  suffers  no  exhaustion  ;  and  the  mind 
suffers  no  strain  or  exhaustion  because  it  is  in  its  nature 
incapable  of  wear  and  tear.  It  is  only  when  the  mind  acts 
on  the  brain  that  exhaustion  takes  place.  I  speak  now  of 
what  happens  in  states  of  ordinarily  good  health.* 

*  If  it  is  objected  that  I  have  allowed  Sophereus  to  overstate  the  power 
of  the  mind  to  deal  better  with  diflSculties  after  "  a  good  night's  sleep,"  as 
we  say,  than  it  had  dealt  with  them  before,  I  will  cite  the  testimony  of  one 
of  the  most  prolific  of  writers  and  one  of  the  most  self -observing  of  men, 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  whose  greatest  success  was  achieved  in  the  field  of  poeti- 
cal and  prose  fiction.  This  is  a  department  in  which  inventive  genius  is 
the  main  reliance,  and  is  put  to  its  greatest  tasks.  In  that  part  of  Scott's 
"Diary"  which  covers  the  year  1826 — the  period  when  he  was  writing 
"  Woodstock  " — ^he  says : 

"  The  half-hour  between  waking  and  rising  has  all  my  life  proved  pro- 
pitious to  any  task  which  was  exercising  my  invention.  When  I  got  over 
any  knotty  diflSculty  in  a  story,  or  have  had  in  former  times  to  fill  up  a 
passage  in  a  poem,  it  was  always  when  I  first  opened  my  eyes  that  the 
desired  ideas  thronged  upon  me.  This  is  so  much  the  case  that  I  am  in  the 
habit  of  relying  upon  it  and  saying  to  myself  when  I  am  at  a  loss,  '  Never 
mind,  we  shall  have  it  at  seven  o'clock  to-morrow  morning.'  If  I  have  for- 
got a  circumstance,  a  name,  or  a  copy  of  verses,  it  is  the  same  thing.  .  .  . 
This  morning  I  had  some  new  ideas  respecting  '  Woodstock '  which  will  make 
the  story  better."     (Lockhart's  "  Life  of  Scott,"  vol.  viii,  chap.  Ixviil.) 

This,  it  is  truCj  was  the  experience  of  a  man  of  extraordinary  genius, 


LADY  MACBETH'S  SLEEP-WALKING.  491 

I  shall  now  refer  to  some  of  the  yery  peculiar  phenom- 
ena of  somnambulism  ;  and  in  illustration  of  their  various 
phases  I  shall  resort  to  Shakespeare's  picture  of  the  sleep- 

whose  facility  of  invention  was  as  marvelous  as  the  ease  and  rapidity  with 
which  he  wrote.  But  his  experience  was  a  very  common  one.  It  has  been 
shared  by  persons  of  much  more  humble  faculties.  I  am  sure  that  per- 
sons in  my  own  profession,  who  have  been  engaged  in  pursuits  very  differ- 
ent from  those  of  the  poet  or  the  novelist,  will,  from  their  own  experience, 
confinn  what  is  assumed  by*  Sophereus  as  a  well-known  mental  phenome- 
non. I  could  describe  in  detail  many  instances  in  which  I  have  gone 
through  with  the  same  fruition  of  new  ideas,  resulting  from  the  acquisi- 
tions obtained  during  sleep,  or  following  from  the  benefits  of  sleep.  For 
example,  when  having  to  do  with  a  complex  state  of  facts,  needing  orderiy 
arrangement  and  analysis,  it  has  repeatedly  happened  to  me  to  rise  in  the 
morning  after  a  night  of  undisturbed  sleep,  with  the  whole  of  an  entangled 
skein  unraveled,  whereas  before  retiring  to  rest  the  mass  of  facts  lay  in 
some  confusion  in  the  mind.  In  like  manner  the  mind  can  often  deal  with 
a  legal  question  of  a  new  and  difficult  character.  The  rule  that  ought  to 
be  applied  to  a  particular  case  has  to  be  extracted  from  many  precedents, 
and  perhaps  none  of  them  exactly  cover  the  case  in  hand.  On  such  occa- 
sions, if  one  refrains  from  pushing  the  study  of  his  subject  while  awake 
to  the  severest  analysis,  and  postpones  the  effort  until  the  next  morning, 
the  experience  of  Sir  "Walter  is  very  likely  to  be  repeated.  "It  was 
always,"  he  says,  "when  I  first  opened  my  eyes  that  the  desired  ideas 
thronged  upon  me."  I  am  persuaded,  therefore,  that  although  in  the  study 
of  any  subject  omission  to  master  all  its  elements  and  details,  when  alone 
one  can  accumulate  them,  is  not  to  be  recommended,  there  is  undoubtedly 
much  to  be  gained  by  relieving  the  mind  from  the  continued  effort,  and 
allowing  some  hours  of  sleep  to  intervene,  during  which  the  mind  can  act 
independently  of  all  the  bodily  organs. 

The  question  is,  then,  as  above  suggested,  whether  there  come  to  us 
during  sleep  acquisitions  of  new  ideas  with  or  without  a  simultaneous  con- 
scioxisness  that  we  are  thinking  of  the  subject,  or  whether  the  new  ideas 
follow  from  the  benefits  of  sleep  as  a  state  of  absolute  rest  and  inactivity 
of  the  brain,  and  of  the  intellectual  faculties,  so  that  when  we  awake  both 
the  brain  and  the  mental  powers  are  in  greater  vigor.  The  expression  used 
by  Scott  in  describing  his  own  experience  is  that  as  soon  as  he  awoke  the 
desired  ideas  thronged  upon  him.  This  might  happen  upon  the  hypothesis 
that  the  desired  ideas  came  because  the  brain  and  the  mental  powers,  re- 


492  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

walking  of  Lady  Macbeth,  which,  although  purely  imagi- 
nary, is  a  most  accurate  exhibition  of  nature.  Treating  it, 
as  we  are  entitled  to  treat  it,  as  if  it  were  a  real  occurrence 
at  which  we  ourselves  were  witnesses,  with  a  knowledge  of 
her  character  and  history,  an  analysis  of  the  situation  in 
which  she  was  placed  when  the  habit  of  somnambulism 
came  upon  her,  and  of  the  mode  in  which  her  mind  acted 
upon  her  body,  will  enable  us  to  see  the  phenomena  in 
their  true  philosophical  aspect.  "We  may  suppose  ourselves 
present,  with  the  doctor  and  the  gentlewoman  of  her  bed- 
chamber, when  she  comes  forth  in  her  night-dress  and  with 
a  candle  in  her  hand,  and  we  witness  the  impressive  scen6 
of  a  disturbed  mind  overmastering  the  body  while  the  body 
is  asleep.  It  seems  that,  after  the  murder  of  Duncan,  when 
she  imbrued  her  own  hands  with  his  blood  in  smearing  the 
faces  of  his  sleeping  grooms,  the  habit  of  sleep-walking  had 

freshed  by  sleep,  were  in  greater  vigor.  But  I  incline  to  believe  that  his 
meaning  was  the  reverse  of  this.  At  all  events,  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
true  explanation  of  the  phenomenon  is  that  during  sound  and  undisturbed 
sleep  of  the  body,  including  the  brain,  we  do  unconsciously  think  of  the 
subject  on  which  our  waking  thoughts  had  been  previously  employed; 
that  in  these  states  there  are  acquisitions  of  new  ideas  which  we  bring 
with  us  out  of  the  state  in  which  they  were  acquired,  or,  as  Sir  "Walter 
expressed  it,  which  throng  upon  us  as  soon  as  we  open  our  eyes.  While, 
therefore,  it  may  be  said  that  this  hypothesis  assumes  the  existence  of  the 
mind  as  a  spiritual  or  intellectual  entity  capable  of  action  as  a  thinking 
being  without  any  action  of  the  bodily  organs,  the  question  is,  on  the  other 
hand,  whether  the  phenomena  here  considered  have  not  a  very  strong  tend- 
ency to  prove  that  the  mind  is  such  a  substantive  and  independent  exist- 
ence. When  it  is  remembered  how  common  is  the  experience  here  referred 
to,  how  various  the  phenomena  are,  how  they  are  manifested  on  all  kinds 
of  subjects,  in  regard  to  lines  of  conduct,  and  to  everything  about  which  we 
are  perplexed,  and  when  we  add  these  peculiar  phenomena  to  the  other 
evidence  which  tends  to  establish  the  same  belief  in  the  existence  of  the 
mind  as  something  entirely  apart  from  all  its  physical  environment,  it 
seems  to  me  that  the  argument  becomes  very  strong,  and  that  I  have  not 
made  my  ima^nary  philosopher  press  it  beyond  its  legitimate  bounds. 


LADY  MACBETH'S  SLEEP-WALKING.  493 

come  over  her.  As  we  stand  by  the  side  of  the  awe- 
stricken  witnesses,  and  hear  their  whispered  conversation, 
we  get  the  first  description  of  her  actions  since  the  new 
king,  Macbeth,  her  husband,  whom  she  had  instigated  to 
murder  the  old  king,  went  into  the  field.  These  first  ac- 
tions of  hers,  as  described  by  the  gentlewoman  to  the  doc- 
tor, do  not  necessarily  exhibit  the  working  of  a  guilty  con- 
science. They  exhibit  a  mind  oppressed  and  disturbed  by 
cares  of  business  and  of  state  ;  and  they  are  a  distinct  class 
of  the  phenomena  of  somnambulism.  The  gentlewoman 
tells  the  doctor  that  '^  since  his  Majesty  went  into  the  field, 
I  have  seen  her  rise  from  her  bed,  throw  her  night-gown 
upon  her,  unlock  her  closet,  take  forth  paper,  fold  it,  write 
upon  it,  read  it,  afterward  seal  it,  and  again  return  to  bed  ; 
yet  all  this  while  in  a  most  fast  sleep.''  This  is  merely  a 
description  of  what  the  witness  has  seen,  and  it  might  oc- 
cur to  any  person  of  strong  intellectual  faculties,  disturbed 
by  great  cares,  without  the  action  of  a  guilty  conscience.  It 
makes  the  situation  real  when  the  doctor  recognizes  the  fact 
of  this  *' great  perturbation  in  nature!  to  receive  at  once 
the  benefit  of  sleep,  and  do  the  effects  of  watching."  As 
they  are  whispering  together,  the  doctor  trying  to  make  the 
gentlewoman  tell  him  what  at  such  times  she  has  heard  her 
say,  which  the  loyal  servant  refuses  to  tell.  Lady  Macbeth 
moves  forward,  with  the  taper  in  her  hand. 

Here  we  may  pause  upon  the  first  exhibition  of  the 
phenomenon  called  sleep-walking,  which  we  get  by  descrip- 
tion only,  and  analyze  the  nature  of  the  action.  It  is  per- 
fectly apparent  that  what  the  poet  accepted  as  true,  is  the 
power  of  the  mind  to  move  the  body  while  the  body  is 
asleep,  so  as  to  make  it  perform  many  acts.  Experience 
makes  this  assumption  perfectly  correct.  I  presume  it 
will  not  be  questioned  that  this  phenomenon  is  described 
by  Shakespeare  with  entire  accuracy,  and  it  is  explicable 
only  upon  the  hypothesis  that  the  mind  has  some  control 


494  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

over  the  body  while  the  body  is  asleep.  Actions  as  minute 
and  as  much  premeditated  as  those  performed  by  Lady 
Macbeth  **in  a  most  fast  sleep,"  have  been  witnessed  in 
persons  who  were  undoubtedly  asleep,  and  whose  eyes  were 
open  for  some  purposes,  but,  as  in  her  case,  their  sense  was 
shut  for  other  purposes. 

We  now  pass  to  the  more  awful  exhibition  of  a  mind 
worked  upon  by  a  guilty  conscience.  Lady  Macbeth  comes 
out  of  her  bedroom  fast  asleep,  but  with  a  light  in  her 
band.  The  gentlewoman  who  interprets  her  state  to  the 
doctor  informs  him  that  she  has  a  light  by  her  bedside  con- 
tinuously ;  and  we  thus  learn  that  her  nights  are  so  dis- 
turbed that  she  can  not  bear  darkness.  They  notice  that 
her  eyes  are  open,  but  "their  sense  is  shut."  Then  begin 
the  terrific  manifestations  of  the  control  of  a  guilty  con- 
science over  both  mind  and  body,  when  the  memory,  alive 
to  certain  terrible  facts,  plays  fantastic  tricks  with  itself^ 
and  mingles  delusions  with  realities.  As  she  approaches, 
with  the  taper  in  her  hand,  she  performs  an  action  which 
the  gentlewoman  says  she  has  repeatedly  seen  her  go 
through,  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  at  a  time,  endeavoring  to 
rub  a  spot  of  blood  o2  from  one  of  her  hands.  Her  hands 
have  been  clean,  physically,  since  the  time  when  she  first 
washed  them  on  the  fatal  night ;  but  the  delusion  that  is 
upon  her  is  that  there  is  blood  on  them  still.  She  goes  on 
rubbing  them,  and  her  first  exclamation  is,  "  Out,  damned 
spot !  out,  J  say  ! "  Yet  it  will  not  out.  That  little  hand 
wears  what  she  imagines  to  be  an  indelible  stain.  Aiter 
her  first  exclamation,  the  memory  rushes  back  to  the  mo- 
ment before  the  murder.  She  thinks  she  hears,  perhaps 
does  hear,  the  clock  strike — "  one,  two  " ;  and  then,  as  if 
speaking  to  her  husband,  she  says,  "  Why,  then  His  time  to 
do't."  Then  there  is  a  pause,  and  out  comes  the  reflection, 
*'Hell  is  murky  !"  This  seems  to  indicate  that  darkness, 
in  which  she  and  her  husband  are  whispering  together  just 


LADY  MACBETH'S  SLEEP-WALKING.  495 

before  the  murder,  is  a  hell,  and  so  yery  fit  for  what  is 
about  to  be  done.  Hell  is  murky,  as  this  chamber  is. 
Then  she  remembers  her  husband's  reluctance,  and  fancy- 
ing that  she  is  still  talking  with  him  and  bracing  him  up 
to  the  deed,  she  says  :  "  Fye,  my  lord,  fye  !  a  soldier,  and 
afeard  ?  What  need  we/e«r  who  knows  it,  when  none  can 
call  OUT  power  to  account  ?''  Presently  she  is  looking  back 
upon  the  deed,  and  exclaims,  "  Yet  who  would  haye 
thought  the  old  man  to  haye  had  so  much  blood  in  him  !  *' 
Then  she  recurs  to  herself  as  if  she  were  another  :  **  The 
thane  of  Fife  had  a  wife  ;  where  is  she  now  ? "  Again 
she  thinks  of  her  stained  hands  :  "  What,  will  these  hands 
ne'er  be  clean  ?  "  Are  they  to  wear  this  horrible  stain  for- 
eyer  ?  Instantly  she  is  again  at  the  door  of  Duncan's 
chamber,  speaking  to  her  husband  :  "  No  more  o'  that,  my 
lord,  no  more  o'  that :  you  mar  all  with  this  starting ! " 
Then  her  hands  again,  her  poor  hands  ;  they  smell  of  the 
blood :  "  Here's  the  smell  of  the  blood  still :  all  the  per- 
fumes of  Arabia  will  not  sweeten  this  little  hand  !  Oh,  oh, 
oh  ! "  Then,  after  another  pause,  she  is  speaking  to  her  hus- 
band, when  the  deed  has  been  done  :  "  Wash  your  hands, 
put  on  your  night-gown  ;  look  not  so  pale  ! "  In  another 
instant  she  is  thinking  of  Banquo's  murder,  which  occurred 
after  Duncan's,  and  she  says  to  her  husband  :  *'I  tell  you 
yet  again,  Banquo's  buried;  he  can  not  come  out  of  his 
grave !  "  Once  more  she  is  back  at  the  door  of  Duncan's 
chamber,  in  the  darkness,  and  the  murder  has  been  com- 
mitted. Speaking  to  her  husband,  she  says  :  **  To  bed,  to 
bed ;  there's  knocking  at  the  gate.  Come,  come,  come, 
come,  giye  me  your  hand.  What's  done  can  not  be  undone. 
To  bed,  to  bed,  to  bed  ! "  Then  she  goes  quickly  toward 
her  chamber  and  to  bed,  belieying  that  Macbeth  is  with  her 
and  that  she  is  holding  his  hand. 

How  mixed,  how  wild,  how  fantastic,  how  coherent  and 
incoherent  are  these  phantoms  of  the  imagination  !     If  she 


496  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

were  awake,  things  would  not  thus  present  themselyes  to 
her*  Every  event  in  the  dreadful  story  would  stand  in  its 
true  relations,  and,  however  she  might  be  suffering  the 
pangs  of  a  guilty  conscience,  she  would  not  mix  up  the 
scenes  through  which  she  had  passed,  but  every  fact  would 
stand  in  its  due  order.  She  would  be  conscious  that  there 
was  no  blood  upon  her  hands,  and  that  they  did  not  need 
the  perfumes  of  Arabia  to  sweeten  them.  She  would  know 
that  Duncan  had  been  murdered,  and  would  not  enact  the 
murder  over  again.  She  would  remember  that  Banquo's 
murder  had  not  been  distinctly  made  known  to  her,  and 
that  she  had  only  surmised  it,  when  at  the  banquet  Macbeth 
fancied  that  the  ghost  of  Ban  quo  rose  and  sat  at  the  table 
— an  apparition  which  neither  she  nor  any  one  else  saw. 
But,  in  that  strange  scene,  it  flashed  across  her  mind  that 
Banquo  was  dead,  and  to  herself  she  interpreted  truly  what 
was  passing  in  her  husband's  mind,  and  instantly  explained 
his  conduct  to  the  company  as  the  recun-ence  of  an  old 
malady  to  which  he  was  subject. 

If  we  go  back  to  what  had  actually  happened  before  the 
banquet,  and  then  go  forward  to  the  condition  in  which 
she  is  seen  by  the  doctor  and  her  attendant,  we  shall  un- 
derstand how  her  mind  was  working,  not  upon  a  fact  that 
she  knew,  but  upon  a  fact  which  she  had  truly  surmised. 
In  her  somnambulistic  state,  she  says  to  her  husband  :  ^^ I  tell 
you  yet  again,  Banquo's  buried ;  he  can  not  come  out  of 
his  grave."  Had  she  said  this  to  him  before  ?  According 
to  the  course  of  the  story,  as  the  text  of  the  play  gives  it 
to  us,  she  had  not.  In  the  second  scene  of  the  third  act, 
where,  after  Duncan  had  been  murdered  and  Macbeth  had 
become  king,  they  are  preparing  for  the  banquet,  to  which 
Banquo  was  expected  as  one  of  the  guests,  Macbeth  and  his 
wife  are  talking  together,  and  she  is  trying  to  get  him  out 
of  the  contemplative  and  conscience  -  stricken  mood  in 
which  he  looks  back  upon  what  they  have  done.     He  con- 


THE  BAKQUET  IN  MACBETH.  497 

eludes  one  of  his  mixed  and  melancholy  reflections  with 

these  words : 

Duncan  is  in  his  grave ; 
After  life's  fitfid  fever  he  sleeps  well ; 
Treason  has  done  his  worst :  nor  steel,  nor  poison, 
Malice  domestic,  foreign  levy,  nothing 
Can  touch  him  further ! 

Then  she  says  to  him  : 

Lady  Macbeth.  Come  on  ; 
Gentle  my  lord,  sleek  o'er  your  rugged  looks; 
Be  hright  and  jovial  'mong  your  guests  to-night. 

Macbeth.  So  shall  I,  love ;  and  so,  I  pray,  be  you ; 
Let  your  remembrance  apply  to  Banquo  ; 
Present  him  eminence*  both,  with  eye  and  tongue: 
Unsafe  the  while,  that  we 

Must  lave  our  honors  in  these  flattering  streams ; 
And  make  our  faces  vizards  to  our  hearts, 
Disguising  what  they  are. 

Just  at  this  moment,  therefore,  he  is  not  thinking  of 
killing  Banquo,  but  wishes  him  to  be  received  with  all 
honor.  But,  in  answer  to  his  last  reflection  on  the  hypo- 
critical part  that  they  must  act,  she  says  to  him  : 

You  must  leave  this. 

Then  bursts  forth  the  terrific  oppression  of  his  soul : 
Macb.  Oh,  full  of  scorpions  is  my  mind,  dear  wife  I 

Thou  know'st  that  Banquo,  and  his  Fleance,  lives. 
Lady  M.  But  in  them  nature's  copy''s  not  eterne.f 
Macb.  There's  comfort  yet;  they  are  assailable; 

Then  be  thou  jocund :  ere  the  bat  hath  flown 

*  Do  him  every  honor. 

f  By  some  commentators,  this  hint,  given  with  female  subtilty,  is  ex- 
plained to  mean  that  their  copy-hold,  or  lease,  by  which  Banquo  and  his 
son  hold  their  lives,  is  not  etemaL  The  more  probable  meaning  is  that,  if 
they  are  cut  off,  nature  will  produce  no  more  copies  of  their  race.  But  in 
either  meaning  the  hint  that  she  gave  was  the  same,  and  it  included  both 
Banquo  and  his  son. 


49a  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

His  cloistered  flight ;  ere,  to  black  Hecate's  summons, 
The  shard-borne  bettle,  with  his  drowsy  hums, 
Hath  rung  night's  yawning  peal,  there  shall  be  done 
A  deed  of  dreadful  note ! 

She  affects  not  to  understand  him — perhaps  does  not — 
and  she  asks  : 

WhaVs  to  be  done  ? 

Macb.  Be  innocent  of  the  knowledge,  dearest  chuck, 
Till  thou  applaud  the  deed.    Come,  seeling  night, 
Skarf  up  the  tender  eye  of  pitiful  day ; 
And,  with  thy  bloody  and  invisible  hand. 
Cancel,  and  tear  to  pieces,  that  great  bond 
Which  keeps  me  pale! — Light  thickens;  and  the  crow 
Makes  wing  to  the  rooky  wood ; 
Good  things  of  day  begin  to  droop  and  drowse ; 
"While  night's  black  agents  to  their  prey  do  rouse. 
Thou  marvel'st  at  my  words:  but  hold  thee  still; 
Things  bad  begun  make  strong  themselves  by  ill ; 
So,  prithee,  go  with  me.  [Exeunt, 

In  the  next  scene,  the  murderers,  previously  engaged 
by  Macbeth,  waylay  Banquo  in  the  park  as  he  is  approach- 
ing the  castle,  and  kill  him,  his  son  Fleance  and  a  servant 
escaping.  Then  follows  the  banquet,  Macbeth  himself 
moving  about  at  first,  and  then  he  takes  a  seat  at  the  table 
lower  down.  One  of  the  murderers  comes  in  and  whispers 
to  him  what  has  been  done.  The  stage  direction  is,  *'  The 
ghost  of  Banquo  rises  and  sits  in  Macbeth's  place."  As  no 
one  at  the  table  but  Macbeth  sees  this  apparition,  it  might 
be  inferred  that  it  is  the  force  of  his  imagination  which 
presents  the  spectacle  to  him,  as  Lady  Macbeth  supposes, 

when  she  says  to  him  : 

O  proper  stuff! 
This  is  the  very  painting  of  your  fear : 
This  is  the  air-drawn  dagger,  which,  you  said, 
Led  you  to  Duncan. 

But  the  stage  direction  must  be  taken  as  a  literal  ap- 


ABlSrOKMAL  ACTION  OF  THE  MIND  IN  SLEEP.    499 

pearance  of  the  ghost,  so  as  to  make  it  visible  to  the  audi- 
ence, while  it  is  invisible  to  all  at  the  table  excepting  Mac- 
beth himself. 

If,  now,  we  go  forward  to  the  night  when  Lady  Macbeth 
is  walking  in  her  sleep,  and  remember  what  had  occurred 
previous  to  and  at  the  banquet,  we  see  how,  without  any 
actual  previous  knowledge  that  her  husband  intended  to 
have  Banquo  killed,  and  with  only  the  surmise  that  he  had 
been  killed,  which  comes  to  her  at  the  banquet,  she  came 
to  say  to  her  husband,  in  her  dream  : 

I  tell  you  yet  again,  Banquo's  buried ;  he  can  not  come  out  of  Lis 
grave. 

Here  we  have  a  fact  lodged  in  the  mind  during  the 
waking  hours,  and  in  sleep  wrought  into  a  strange  mixture 
with  the  killing  of  Duncan,  with  which  it  had  in  reality 
no  connection,  having  transpired  afterward.  This  is  very 
strong  proof  of  the  capacity  of  the  mind  to  act  during  sleep 
without  the  action  of  the  brain.  The  mind  of  the  guilty 
sleep-walker  is  filled  with  horrible  memories,  which  it  can 
not  shut  out,  but  with  which  it  can  not  deal  in  their  actual 
order  and  true  relations,  because  the  sequences  of  thought, 
during  sleep,  are  abnormal.  Those  whose  experience  has 
never  involved  any  such  workings  of  conscience  are  per- 
fectly aware  of  the  fact  that  in  dreams  ideas  that  are  sepa- 
rately lodged  in  the  consciousness  become  entangled  with 
each  other  in  the  most  fantastic  manner.  Lady  Macbeth 
at  one  moment  even  thinks  of  herself  as  if  she  were  some 
one  else,  and  asks.  Where  is  the  woman  now  who  was  the 
wife  of  the  thane  of  Fife  ?  Every  one  has  experienced  in 
sleep  the  same  projection  of  one's  self  out  of  one's  own 
consciousness ;  so  that  we  seem  to  be  contemplating  our- 
selves as  if  we  were  a  different  person. 

The  phenomena  that  occur  during  the  delirium  of  fever, 
where  the  normal  consciousness  is  lost  for  the  time  being. 


600  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

are  in  some  respects  analogous  to  and  in  some  respects  dif- 
ferent from  those  which  occur  during  the  somnambulistic 
condition.  Delirium  occurs  when  the  body  and  the  brain 
are  not  in  the  condition  of  sleep  ;  but  the  senses  of  percep- 
tion convey  false  impressions  to  the  mind,  and  the  mind 
itself  has  temporarily  lost  its  power  of  correcting  its  own 
action  by  its  former  experience.  The  nearest  friends  who 
are  around  the  bedside  are  not  recognized  by  the  sufferer  ; 
they  appear  to  be  strangers,  and  the  patient  talks  to  them 
as  if  both  they  and  he  were  not  their  real  selves.  It  would 
seem  that  we  can  safely  infer  from  the  state  of  delirium  a 
suspension  of  the  direct  and  normal  connection  between 
the  brain  and  the  mind  ;  that  neither  of  them  can  act,  in  re- 
lation to  the  other,  as  they  both  act  when  there  is  no  such 
disturbance  ;  but  that  this  condition,  so  far  from  proving 
or  tending  to  prove  that  the  mind  is  not  an  independent 
spiritual  existence,  has  a  strong  tendency  to  prove  that  it 
is.  Insanity,  on  the  other  hand,  is  probably  a  derange- 
ment of  the  mental  organism  akin  to  derangement  of  the 
physical  organism,  but  not  necessarily  connected  with  or 
induced  by  the  latter,  for  the  bodily  health  of  the  insane  is 
often  entirely  sound  while  the  mind  is  in  an  entirely  un- 
sound and  irrational  condition.  But  the  phenomena  of  in- 
sanity are  too  various  and  multiform,  and  too  much  depend- 
ent on  both  physical  and  moral  causes,  to  afford  any  satisfac- 
tory proofs  of  the  postulate  which  I  propound  in  this  essay. 
The  safest  line  of  investigation  is  that  which  I  suggested  in 
the  first  instance,  namely,  to  regard  the  mind  as  an  organ- 
ism, and  to  ascertain  whether  it  is  susceptible  of  anatomical 
examination  in  a  sense  analogous  to  anatomical  examination 
of  the  bodily  organism.  All  that  I  have  hitherto  said  is 
useful  by  way  of  preliminary  illustration  of  my  main  hy- 
pothesis. It  has  a  strong  tendency  to  show  that  the  mind, 
instead  of  consisting,  as  some  philosophers  now  suppose,  of 
the  products  of  a  material  organism,  is  itself  an  organized 


PRODUCTS  OF  MATERIAL  ORGANISMS.         501 

being  with  a  definite  structure  and  capable  of  living  a  life 
of  its  own,  although  at  present  dwelling  in  a  corporeal  or- 
ganism which  affects  it  in  various  ways  while  the  connec- 
tion lasts.  The  theory  that  all  mental  phenomena  are 
products  of  our  corporeal  organism  is  one  that  appears  to 
derive  great  support  from  examinations  of  the  structure  of 
the  brain  and  of  the  whole  nervous  system.  The  physical 
anatomy  of  man  exhibits  very  striking  illustrations  of  the 
influence  of  corporeal  changes  upon  the  mental  state,  as  the 
mental  changes  show  corresponding  influences  upon  the  cor- 
poreal state.  But,  then,  there  are  undoubtedly  phenomena 
that  are  purely  and  exclusively  mental ;  and  therefore  when 
we  undertake  to  solve  these  mental  phenomena  by  the  ma- 
terialistic hypothesis  we  find  a  sense  of  inadequate  causa- 
tion confronting  us  so  directly  that  we  are  compelled  to 
look  for  a  solution  elsewhere.  It  is  certain  'that  things 
take  place  in  the  inner  recesses  of  our  minds,  in  the  pro- 
duction of  which  the  bodily  senses  not  only  render  no  aid, 
but  in  which  they  have  no  part  whatever.  It  is  necessary, 
therefore,  to  carry  our  investigations  into  a  class  of  mental 
phenomena  in  which  all  physical  causation  ceases  to  afford 
an  adequate  guide  to  a  conclusion. 

It  will  not  be  denied  that  the  products  of  material  or- 
ganisms can  be  proved  to  consist  of  matter  and  of  nothing 
else.  Their  presence  can  be  detected  by  some  physical 
test.  For  example,  if  it  be  true  that  all  animals  have  been 
evolved  from  protoplasm,  the  organisms  are  simply  changes 
in  the  form  of  a  certain  portion  of  matter.  If,  in  an  indi- 
vidual organism  having  a  highly  developed  nervous  struct- 
ure, there  are  actions  produced  by  an  excitation  of  the 
nerves  of  sensation,  those  actions  are  simply  molecular 
changes  in  the  matter  comprising  the  sensitive  and  easily 
moved  substance  of  the  nerve-fibers.  However  far  and  into 
whatever  minutiaa  we  carry  our  investigations  into  organized 
matter,  we  find  that  its  products  remain  material,  and  that 


50^  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

they  consist  only  of  changes  in  the  material  substance  of  a 
material  organization.  But,  when  we  pass  from  such  material 
products  into  the  domain  of  purely  mental  phenomena,  are 
we  warranted  in  saying  that,  although  the  latter  are  not, 
properly  speaking,  products  of  the  material  organization, 
they  are  effects  corresponding  to  and  dependent  upon  the 
excitation  of  the  nerves  of  sensation  ?  This  last  hypothesis 
must  assume  one  of  two  things  :  either  that  there  is  a  dis- 
tinction between  those  corporeal  feelings  which  do  not  and 
those  which  do  produce  mental  changes  or  mental  effects, 
or,  if  there  are  corporeal  feelings  which  produce  corre- 
sponding mental  states  and  mental  action,  there  must  be  a 
something  on  which  the  effects  can  be  wrought,  and  this 
something  must  be  an  independent  organism.  It  is  doubt- 
less true  that  there  are  many  corporeal  feelings  which  are 
followed  by  no  yery  important  mental  effects,  especially 
during  a  sound  state  of  bodily  health.  But  it  is  equally 
true  that,  if  there  are  corporeal  feelings  which  influence  our 
mental  action,  there  must  be  an  organism  which  is  capable 
of  being  so  influenced  ;  and  our  experience  and  conscious- 
ness teach  us  that  there  is  such  a  difference  between  cor- 
poreal feelings  and  mental  phenomena  that  the  probability 
of  a  difference  in  the  originating  causes  becomes  yery  great. 
We  know  that  the  mind  can  and  does  act  with  great  force 
when  bodily  suffering  is  extreme  ;  that  it  has  an  energy  of 
its  own  which  enables  it  to  rise  aboye  all  the  power  of  phys- 
ical pain  to  restrain  or  influence  it.  I  must  therefore  fol- 
low out,  as  I  had  originally  projected,  my  anatomical 
analysis  of  the  mind  as  an  independent  spiritual  organism. 
In  order  to  arrive  at  a  correct  conclusion  concerning 
the  structure  of  mind,  we  must  first  observe  that  there  are 
four  special  corporeal  organs  by  which  the  capability  of  the 
mind  to  receive  impressions  from  matter  is  acted  upon.  It 
is  through  these  means  that  the  properties  of  matter,  or 
those  properties  which  can  make  themselves  known  to  us. 


CONSCIOUSNESS.  608 

become  known  to  us.  The  senses,  as  they  are  usually 
called,  are  sight,  hearing,  smell,  and  taste.  The  external 
organ  of  each  of  these  senses  is  furnished  with  a  set  of 
nerves,  the  function  of  which  is  to  transmit  from  that  or- 
gan a  wave  of  molecular  motion  along  the  fluid  or  semi- 
fluid substance  inclosed  in  the  nerve-tubes  to  the  great 
nerve-center  the  brain,  the  central  recipient  of  all  such 
motions.  Such,  at  least,  is  the  theory,  which  may  be  ac- 
cepted as  a  fact.  But,  then,  the  question  remains.  What 
is  the  intellectual  perception  or  mental  cognition  of  the 
idea  suggested  by  one  of  these  supposed  transmissions  of  a 
wave  of  molecular  motion  ?  Is  there  a  being,  a  person,  a 
spiritual  entity,  conceiving  the  idea  or  having  an  intel- 
lectual perception  of  it  ?  Or  is  there  no  such  being,  and 
while  we  attribute  to  the  oflice  of  the  nervous  system  the 
function  of  producing  certain  feelings  or  sensations  in  the 
brain,  do  these  sensations  or  feelings  constitute  all  that 
there  is  of  consciousness  ? 

It  is  impossible  for  me  to  conceive  of  consciousness  as 
anything  but  an  intuitive  sense  of  his  own  existence,  ex- 
perienced by  a  being  capable  of  such  an  experience,  because 
endowed  with  such  a  faculty.  It  is  certain  that  when  we 
so  regard  consciousness  we  are  not  deceiving  ourselves  ;  for 
if  any  one  will  consider  what  would  happen  to  him  if  he 
should  lose  this  faculty  of  being  sensible  of  his  own  exist- 
ence, he  will  see  that  in  the  event  of  that  loss  he  could 
neither  distinguish  himself  from  other  persons,  nor  have 
any  control  over  his  own  actions,  or  any  cognition  what- 
ever. For  this  reason,  the  theory  on  which  I  made  some 
criticisms  in  one  of  our  late  conversations  is  the  one  with 
which  I  contrast  my  conception  of  mind.  If  that  theory 
fails  to  satisfy  a  reflecting  person  in  regard  to  the  nature 
of  consciousness,  as  certified  to  him  by  his  own  experience, 
the  hypothesis  that  the  mind  is  an  extended  and  organized 
being,  of  which  a  conception  can  be  formed,  and  not  an 


604  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

unextended  and  unorganized  something  of  which,  no  con- 
ception can  be  formed,  must  be  accepted  as  the  alterna- 
tive. 

I  explained  in  our  former  discussion  my  understanding 
of  Mr.  Spencer's  theory  of  the  only  ego  that  can  be  scien- 
tifically recognized ;  and,  in  order  to  encounter  it  by  my 
own  hypothesis,  I  will  here  restate  its  substantial  position 
in  a  condensed  form. 

By  the  ego  of  which  he  treats,  I  understand  him  to 
mean  all  that  we  can  arrive  at  by  an  analysis  of  what  takes 
place  in  the  body  and  its  functions,  and  of  *'  what  is  given 
in  consciousness."  This  phrase — "what  is  given  in  con- 
sciousness '' — ^reveals  to  us  his  purpose  to  reduce  conscious- 
ness from  a  self-conviction  and  cognition  of  one's  own 
existence  to  a  mere  passing  group  of  feelings,  which  con- 
stitute "the  ever-changing  states  of  consciousness"  that 
we  ^^  call  mind."  So  that,  when  we  speak  of  mind,  we 
mean  and  can  mean  nothing  more  than  certain  states  of 
feeling  produced  in  our  brains  by  perpetually  changing  im- 
pressions. "We  do  not  and  can  not  mean  that  there  is 
a  person  who  perceives  and  holds  ideas  suggested  by  ex- 
ternal objects  through  the  action  of  his  nervous  system. 
All  that  we  know  about  any  ego,  any  mental  I,  is  that  there 
is  a  physical  structure,  pervaded  by  certain  physical  forces, 
that  produce  *'  consecutive  states,"  which  Mr.  Spencer  calls 
"  mental  states  "  ;  and  the  aggregate  of  the  feelings  and  ideas 
which  thus  constitute  the  mental  states  is  the  only  ego  of 
which  any  continued  existence  can  be  predicated.  But  even 
these  aggregates  of  feelings  and  ideas  have,  according  to 
this  philosopher,  no  principle  of  cohesion  holding  them  to- 
gether as  a  whole  ;  and,  therefore,  all  that  we  can  assume  as 
having  any  continuously  surviving  and  durable  existence  is 
the  changing  states  produced  by  the  action  through  us  of  a 
certain  unknowable  power,  statically  conditioned  in  our 
nervous  organism,  which  is  pervaded  by  a  dynamically  con- 


AUTOMATIC  MACHINES.  605 

ditioned  portion  of  that  unknowable  power  which  is  op- 
erating everywhere  in  nature,  and  is  called  '* energy."* 
So  far  as  this  theory  is  based  upon  the  existence  of  a 
physical  organism,  whose  functions  liberate  from  the  food 
supplied  to  it  certain  forces,  whicli  are  distributed  by  the 
activities  of  the  organism,  we  may  accept  it  as  a  statement 
of  what  actually  takes  place  in  the  form  of  physical  phe- 
nomena. But  when  we  follow  the  physical  phenomena  of 
the  diffused  energy  into  its  action  upon  the  brain,  by  the 
transmission  of  an  impulse,  we  must  stop  with  the  effect  of 
that  impulse  upon  a  corporeal  organ,  or  we  must  go  further 
and  find  a  something  which  receives  into  itself  and  appro- 
priates to  itself  the  idea  the  elements  of  which  the  impulse 
has  transmitted.  The  presence  of  that  something  in  our- 
selves may  be  illustrated  by  its  absence  from  a  mechanism  in 
which  we  know  that  it  does  not  exist,  but  which  appears 
superficially  to  be  animated  by  an  intelligent  principle  pos- 
sessing volition.  "We  stand,  for  example,  before  one  of  those 
automatic  machines  which  perform  actions  that  seem  to  be 
guided  by  a  living  spirit.  They  are  mere  physical  organ- 
isms, constructed  without  the  principle  of  life  that  inhab- 
its animal  organisms,  but  they  are  so  admirably  contrived 
for  the  production  of  certain  limited  but  complex  movements 
that  they  suggest  the  presence  of  a  spiritual  being  acting 
as  we  ourselves  act.  But  the  least  reflection  upon  what 
we  see  makes  us  aware  that  there  is  nothing  before  us  but 
a  mechanical  organism,  in  which  the  artisan  who  made  it 
has  availed  himself  of  certain  forces  of  nature  and  proper- 
ties of  matter,  whereby  he  uses  a  portion  of  the  energy  that 
pervades  the  universe.  There  is  nothing  within  the  ma- 
chine to  which  this  energy  communicates  ideas  that  are  to 

.  *  When  the  unknowable  power  ceases  to  pulsate  through  our  physical 
organism,  this  "mental  state"  ceases — nothing  survives — continuity  is 
ended. 


506  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

be  the  subject  of  its  future  Yoluntary  operation.  All  is 
comprehended  in  a  fixed  mechanical  operation  of  certain 
machinery,  and,  when  we  have  analyzed  and  understood  the 
physical  phenomena,  we  can  follow  them  no  further,  be- 
cause there  is  no  translation  of  the  physical  energy  into 
mental  phenomena.  But  in  ourselves  there  is  such  a 
translation,  and  we  must  follow  it  into  the  mental  phe- 
nomena. So  following  it,  we  find  ourselves  in  the  presence 
of  a  something  which  has  a  self-conscious  individuality, 
and  which,  by  a  mysterious  bond  of  connection,  is  so 
united  with  a  physical  organism  that  it  is  capable  of  re- 
ceiving, appropriating,  and  preserving  the  ideas  which  the 
physical  organism  was  designed  to  produce  in  it. 

My  objection  to  Mr.  Spencer's  system  of  psychology 
may  be  summed  up  in  what  I  shall  now  say  upon  his  chief 
position,  which  is  that  *^an  idea  is  the  psychical  side  of 
what,  on  its  physical  side,  is  an  involved  set  of  molecular 
changes,  propagated  through  an  involved  set  of  nervous 
plexuses."  Translated  into  what  I  take  to  be  his  meaning, 
the  assertion,  or  hypothesis,  is  this  :  An  idea  is  the  men- 
tal cognition  of  an  external  object,  as,  for  example,  a  tree. 
When  we  are  looking  at  or  thinking  of  a  tree,  we  have  a 
mental  cognition  of  a  tree ;  and  this  idea  of  a  tree  is  said 
to  be  the  psychical  side  of  that  which  on  its  physical  side 
has  been  transmitted  to  our  brain  by  molecular  changes 
through  our  visual  nerves.  The  idea  of  the  tree  is  the 
psychical  correlative  of  a  wave  of  molecular  motion  dif- 
fused through  our  organs  of  vision  ;  and  the  conception  of 
a  tree  thus  becomes  a  possible  conception.  But  why  did 
not  the  learned  philosopher  follow  the  wave  of  molecular 
motion  until  he  found  the  impression  of  the  object  which 
the  visual  organs  have  transmitted  to  the  brain,  or  the 
nerve-center,  translated  into  a  thought  by  an  intelligent 
being,  capable,  by  its  own  organization,  of  having  that 
thought  ?    Why  does  he  speak  of  an  idea  as  the  psychical 


TKANSMUTATION  OF  PHYSICAL  IMPRESSIOi^'S.  507 

side  of  what,  on  its  physical  side,  is  one  and  the  same 
thing  ?  Obviously,  because  he  meant  to  ignore  the  psychical 
or  mental  existence  as  an  independent  existence,  or  as  any 
existence  at  all.  Now,  there  is  no  way  in  which  the  psy- 
chical side  and  the  physical  side  can  be  bridged  over,  ex- 
cepting by  the  hypothesis  that  the  mind  is  an  entity  of 
a  peculiar  nature,  different  in  structure  from  the  bodily 
organism,  but  capable,  by  the  connection  between  them, 
of  receiving  and  transmuting  into  thought  the  impressions 
which  the  waves  of  molecular  motion  transmit  to  the  brain 
from  the  external  object.  To  say  that  the  set  of  plexuses, 
or  networks,  which  hold  together  the  waves  of  molecular 
motion,  constitute  the  potentiality  of  the  idea  and  make 
possible  future  ideas  like  it,  explains  nothing.  The  poten- 
tiality of  the  idea,  or  the  possibility  of  ideas  like  it,  de- 
pends upon  the  existence  of  a  something  which  is  capa- 
ble of  conceiving  the  idea,  holding  it,  and  reproducing  it 
to  itself,  after  the  waves  of  molecular  motion  cease.  I  call 
this  a  process  of  translation,  or  transmutation,  because 
there  is  no  other  convenient  term  for  it.  It  is  a  process 
analogous  to  the  physical  assimilation  of  food  by  the  or- 
gans of  physical  digestion,  with  this  difference,  however, 
that  the  action  of  the  mental  organism  in  the  assimilation 
of  ideas  is  the  action  of  a  spiritual  and  intellectual  organ- 
ism upon  materials  that  are  brought  within  its  reach  by  the 
means  of  communication  with  the  external  world  afforded 
by  the  physical  senses  and  the  nervous  system.  The  image 
of  the  tree  produced  upon  the  retina  of  the  eye  by  the  lines 
of  light  that  proceed  from  every  point  of  that  object  is  the 
food  which  the  mind  assimilates  and  transmutes  into  the 
idea  of  the  tree ;  and  this  may  remain  as  a  permanent 
mental  perception  or  cognition,  although  the  object  itself 
may  have  been  seen  but  once.  If  seen  many  times,  the 
various  aspects  in  which  it  has  been  seen  are  transmuted 
into  so  many  distinct  ideas.  If  many  kinds  of  trees,  of 
23 


508  CREATIOiT  OR  EVOLUTION? 

different  shapes  and  dimensions,  have  been  seen,  the  varie- 
ties become  a  part  of  our  consciousness  in  the  seyeral  de- 
grees of  their  precise  resemblances  and  differences  which 
we  happen  to  have  observed,  when  the  different  impressions 
were  produced  upon  the  retina.  Can  there  be  any  doubt 
that  this  is  the  process  by  which  the  infant  begins  to  ac- 
quire ideas  of  external  objects,  and  that,  as  adolescence  goes 
on  and  the  powers  of  sense  expand  with  the  growth  and 
exercise  of  the  physical  organs,  there  is  a  corresponding 
growth  and  expansion  of  the  mental  powers  ? 

This  hypothesis  of  the  progress  of  mental  growth,  paris 
passibus  with  the  growth  of  the  physical  organism,  brings 
me  to  the  consideration  of  one  of  those  specimens  of  Mr. 
Spencer's  peculiar  logic,  in  a  passage  in  which  he  under- 
takes to  disprove  the  existence  of  mind  as  anything  more 
than  what  he  calls  the  psychical  side  of  physical  impres- 
sions. He  is  treating  of  the  impossibility  of  our  ^H^now- 
ing "  anything  about  the  substance  of  mind  ;  and  he  pro- 
pounds this  impossibility  in  the  following  logical  formula  : 

...  To  know  anything  is  to  distinguish  it  as  such  or  such — to 
class  it  as  of  this  or  that  order.  An  object  is  said  to  be  but  little 
known  when  it  is  alien  to  objects  of  which  we  have  had  experience ; 
and  it  is  said  to  be  well  known  when  there  is  great  community  of 
attributes  between  it  and  objects  of  which  we  have  had  experience. 
Hence,  by  implication,  an  object  is  completely  known  when  this 
recognized  community  is  complete;  and  completely  unknown  when 
there  is  no  recognized  community  at  all.  Manifestly,  then,  the 
smallest  conceivable  degree  of  knowledge  implies  at  least  two  things 
between  which  some  community  is  recognized.  But,  if  so,  how  can 
we  know  the  substance  of  mind?  To  know  the  substance  of  mind 
is  to  be  conscious  of  some  community  between  it  and  some  other 
substance.  If,  with  the  idealist,  we  say  that  there  exists  no  other 
substance,  then,  necessarily,  as  there  is  nothing  with  which  the 
substance  of  mind  can  be  even  compared,  much  less  assimilated,  it 
remains  unknown ;  while,  if  we  hold  with  the  realist  that  being 
is  fundamentally  divisible  into  that  which  is  present  to  us  as  mind, 


SUBSTANCE  OF  THE  MIND.  509 

and  that  which,  lying  outside  of  it,  is  not  mind,  then,  as  this  propo- 
sition itself  asserts  a  difference  and  not  a  likeness,  it  is  equally  clear 
that  mind  remains  unclassable  and  therefore  unknowable. 

The  answer  to  this  supposed  insuperable  dilemma  may 
be  made  by  determining  what  we  mean  when  we  speak  of 
knowing  a  thing.  Definition  of  knowing  is  here  essential, 
and  the  first  inquiry  we  have  to  make  is  whether,  in  order 
to  know  mind,  it  is  necessary  to  find  and  recognize  some 
community  between  the  substance  of  mind  and  some  other 
substance  ?  The  statement  is,  on  the  one  hand,  that  there 
exists  no  other  substance  with  which  the  substance  of 
mind  can  be  compared,  much  less  assimilated,  and  there- 
fore there  is  no  aid  to  be  derived  from  resemblance  ;  or,  on 
the  other  hand,  that,  if  being  is  fundamentally  divisible 
into  something  which  is  mind  and  something  which  is  not 
mind,  we  depend  for  a  knowledge  of  mind  on  a  difference, 
and  not  on  a  likeness,  and  we  have  no  means  of  knowing 
that  difference.  Upon  either  proposition,  mind  remains 
unclassable  and  therefore  unknowable. 

It  may  be  conceded  that  our  knowledge  of  the  proper- 
ties and  forms  of  matter  consists  in  recognizing  a  commu- 
nity or  a  difference  between  things  which  belong  to  the 
same  class,  so  that  there  is  a  comparison  between  things 
which  are  of  the  same  substance.  But  what  is  to  prevent 
us  from  classifying  the  substance  of  mind,  when  the  funda- 
mental idea  of  its  substance  is  that  it  is  something  which 
resembles  no  other  substance,  but  constitutes  a  class  or 
description  of  being  that  stands  entirely  by  itself,  and  in 
which,  for  a  knowledge  of  its  properties  we  distinguish  its 
properties  from  those  of  any  other  substance  ?  The  only 
difificulty  that  arises  here  springs  from  the  fact  that  we 
have  but  one  word — substance — by  which  to  speak  of  the 
two  existences  that  we  call  mind  and  matter ;  just  as  we 
can  only  speak  of  an  organism  when  we  speak  of  the  natu- 
ral body  and  the  spiritual  body.     But  this  use  of  the  same 


510  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

term  to  express  things  which  in  our  consciousness  stand 
fundamentally  opposed  to  each  other  does  not  prevent  us 
from  discriminating  between  the  means  by  which  we  be- 
come conscious  of  the  two  things,  or  from  classifying  the 
knowledge  which  we  have  of  mind  as  something  distinct 
from  the  knowledge  which  we  have  of  matter. 

We  must  discriminate  between  the  means  by  which  the 
properties  of  matter  become  known  to  us  and  the  means  by 
which  the  properties  of  mind  become  known  to  us.  In 
both  cases  there  is  knowledge,  but  it  is  knowledge  of  a 
different  kind ;  it  is  obtained  by  different  means  ;  and  we 
must  therefore  recognize  a  fundamental  difference  between 
the  substance  of  mind  and  the  substance  of  matter.  It  is 
true  that  our  knowledge  of  the  properties  of  matter  and 
our  knowledge  of  the  properties  of  mind  are  alike  in  this, 
that  in  both  cases  it  is  knowledge  by  one  and  the  same  per- 
son ;  but  the  distinction  is  that,  in  the  one  case,  I  have 
knowledge  of  objects  external  to  myself,  and,  in  the  other 
case,  I  have  knowledge  of  myself  as  the  person  possessing 
knowledge  of  external  objects.  The  knowledge  that  we 
have  of  ourselves  is  what  most  persons  mean  by  con- 
sciousness, and  it  is  what  we  should  scientifically  under- 
stand by  that  term,  although  consciousness  is  often  used  as 
synonymous  with  mental  cognition  of  things  external  to 
ourselves,  and  as  cognition  of  ourselves  also. 

I  shall  now  quote  from  the  chapter  in  which  Mr.  Spen- 
cer makes  a  special  synthesis  of  reason,  and  in  which  he 
denies  the  existence  of  the  commonly  assumed  hiatus  be- 
tween reason  and  instinct,  maintaining  that  the  former  is 
the  continuation  of  the  latter,  because,  as  he  thinks,  the 
highest  forms  of  psychical  activity  arise  little  by  little  out 
of  the  lowest  and  can  not  be  separated  from  them.  The 
passage  which  I  shall  now  analyze  is  this  : 

"  Here  seems  to  be  the  fittest  place  for  pointing  out 
how  the  general  doctrine  that  has  been  developed  supplies 


SPENCER'S  THEORY  OF  MIND.  511 

a  reconciliation  between  the  experience-hypothesis  as  com- 
monly interpreted  and  the  hypothesis  which  the  transcen- 
dentalists  oppose  to  it. 

"  The  universal  law,  that,  other  things  equal,  the  cohe- 
sion of  psychical  states  is  proportionate  to  the  frequency 
with  which  they  have  followed  one  another  in  experience, 
supplies  an  explanation  of  the  so-called  'forms  of  thought,' 
as  soon  as  it  is  supplemented  by  the  law  that  habitual  psy- 
chical successions  entail  some  hereditary  tendency  to  such 
successions,  which,  under  persistent  conditions,  will  become 
cumulative  in  generation  after  generation.  We  saw  that 
the  establishment  of  those  compound  reflex  actions  called 
instincts  is  comprehensible  on  the  principle  that  inner  re- 
lations are,  by  perpetual  repetition,  organized  into  corre- 
spondence with  outer  relations.  "We  have  now  to  observe 
that  the  establishment  of  those  consolidated,  those  indis- 
soluble, those  instinctive  mental  relations  constituting  our 
ideas  of  space  and  time,  is  comprehensible  on  the  same 
principle. 

"  For,  if,  even  to  external  relations  that  are  often  expe- 
rienced during  the  life  of  a  single  organism,  answering  in- 
ternal relations  are  established  that  become  next  to  auto- 
matic— if  such  a  combination  of  psychical  changes  as  that 
which  guides  a  savage  in  hitting  a  bird  with  an  arrow 
becomes,  by  constant  repetition,  so  organized  as  to  be  per- 
formed almost  without  thought  of  the  processes  of  adjust- 
ment gone  through — and  if  skill  of  this  kind  is  so  far  trans- 
missible that  particular  races  of  men  become  characterized 
by  particular  aptitudes,  which  are  nothing  else  than  partially 
organized  psychical  connections ;  then,  if  there  exist  certain 
external  relations  which  are  experienced  by  all  organisms 
at  all  instants  of  their  waking  lives — relations  which  are 
absolutely  constant,  absolutely  universal — there  will  be  es- 
tablished answering  internal  relations  that  are  absolutely 
constant,  absolutely  universal.     Such  relations  we  have  in 


512  CEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

tliose  of  space  and  time.  The  organization  of  subjective 
relations  adjusted  to  tliese  objective  relations  has  been  cumu- 
lative, not  in  each  race  of  creatures  only,  but  throughout 
successive  races  of  creatures  ;  and  such  subjective  relations 
have,  therefore,  become  more  consolidated  than  all  others. 
Being  experienced  in  every  perception  and  every  action  of 
each  creature,  these  connections  among  outer  existences 
must,  for  this  reason,  too,  be  responded  to  by  connections 
among  inner  feelings  that  are,  above  all  others,  indissolu- 
ble. As  the  substrata  of  all  other  relations  in  the  non-ego, 
they  must  be  responded  to  by  conceptions  that  are  the  sub- 
strata of  all  other  relations  in  the  ego.  Being  the  constant 
and  infinitely  repeated  elements  of  thought,  they  must  be- 
come the  automatic  elements  of  thought — the  elements  of 
thought  which  it  is  impossible  to  get  rid  of — the  ^  forms  of 
intuition.' 

"  Such,  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  only  possible  reconciliation 
between  the  experience-hypothesis  and  the  hypothesis  of 
the  transcendentalists,  neither  of  which  is  tenable  by  itself. 
Insurmountable  difficulties  are  presented  by  the  Kantian 
doctrine  (as  we  shall  hereafter  see) ;  and  the  antagonist 
doctrine,  taken  alone,  presents  difficulties  that  are  equally 
insurmountable.  To  rest  with  the  unqualified  assertion 
that,  antecedent  to  experience,  the  mind  is  a  blank,  is  to 
ignore  the  questions :  Whence  comes  the  power  of  organ- 
izing experiences  ?  Whence  arise  the  different  degrees  of 
that  power  possessed  by  different  races  of  organisms,  and 
different  individuals  of  the  same  race  ?  If,  at  birth,  there 
exists  nothing  but  a  passive  receptivity  of  impressions,  why 
is  not  a  horse  as  educable  as  a  man  ?  Should  it  be  said 
that  language  makes  the  difference,  then  why  do  not  the 
cat  and  the  dog,  reared  in  the  same  household,  arrive  at 
equal  degrees  and  kinds  of  intelligence  ?  Understood  in 
its  current  form,  the  experience-hypothesis  implies  that 
the  presence  of  a  definitely  organized  nervous  system  is  a 


SPENCER'S  THEORY  OF  MIND.  513 

circumstance  of  no  moment — a  fact  not  needing  to  be  taken 
into  account !  Yet  it  is  the  all-important  fact — the  fact  to 
which,  in  one  sense,  the  criticisms  of  Leibnitz  and  others 
pointed — the  fact  without  which  an  assimilation  of  experi- 
ences is  inexplicable. 

*^  Throughout  the  animal  kingdom  in  general  the  actions 
are  dependent  on  the  neryous  structure.  The  physiologist 
shows  us  that  each  reflex  movement  implies  the  agency  of 
certain  nerves  and  ganglia  ;  that  a  development  of  compli- 
cated instincts  is  accompanied  by  complication  of  the  nerv- 
ous centers  and  their  commissural  connections ;  that  the 
same  creature  in  different  stages,  as  larva  and  imago,  for 
example,  changes  its  instincts  as  its  nervous  structure 
changes ;  and  that,  as  we  advance  to  creatures  of  high  in- 
telligence, a  vast  increase  in  the  size  and  in  the  complexity 
of  the  nervous  system  takes  place.  What  is  the  obvious 
inference  ?  It  is  that  the  ability  to  co-ordinate  impressions 
and  to  perform  the  appropriate  actions  always  implies  the 
pre-existence  of  certain  nerves  arranged  in  a  certain  way. 
What  is  the  meaning  of  the  human  brain  ?  It  is  that  the 
many  established  relations  among  its  parts  stand  for  so  many 
estaUished  relations  among  the  psychical  changes.  Each 
of  the  constant  connections  among  the  fibers  of  the  cerebral 
masses  answers  to  some  constant  connection  of  phenomena 
in  the  experiences  of  the  race.  Just  as  the  organized  ar- 
rangement subsisting  between  the  sensory  nerves  of  the 
nostrils  and  the  motor  nerves  of  the  respiratory  muscles 
not  only  makes  possible  a  sneeze,  but  also,  in  the  newly 
born  infant,  implies  sneezings  to  be  hereafter  performed, 
so,  all  the  organized  arrangements  subsisting  among  the 
nerves  of  the  infant's  brain  not  only  make  possible  certain 
combinations  of  impressions,  but  also  imply  that  such  com- 
binations will  hereafter  be  made,  imply  that  there  are  an- 
swering combinations  in  the  outer  world,  imply  a  prepared- 
ness to  cognize  these  combinations,   imply  faculties    of 


514  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

comprehending  them.  It  is  true  that  the  resulting  com- 
pound psychical  changes  do  not  take  place  with  the  same 
readiness  and  automatic  precision  as  the  simple  reflex  action 
instanced  ;  it  is  true  that  some  individual  experiences  seem 
required  to  establish  them.  But,  while  this  is  partly  due 
to  the  fact  that  these  combinations  are  highly  inyolved,  ex- 
tremely varied  in  their  modes  of  occurrence,  made  up,  there- 
fore, of  psychical  relations  less  completely  coherent,  and 
hence  need  further  repetitions  to  perfect  them,  it  is  in  a 
much  greater  degree  due  to  the  fact  that  at  birth  the  or- 
ganization of  the  brain  is  incomplete,  and  does  not  cease 
its  spontaneous  progress  for  twenty  or  thirty  years  after- 
ward. Those  who  contend  that  knowledge  results  wholly 
from  the  experiences  of  the  individual,  ignoring  as  they  do 
the  mental  evolution  which  accompanies  the  autogenous 
development  of  the  nervous  system,  fall  into  an  error  as 
great  as  if  they  were  to  ascribe  all  bodily  growth  and  struct- 
ure to  exercise,  forgetting  the  innate  tendency  to  assume 
the  adult  form.  Were  the  infant  born  with  a  full-sized  and 
completely  constructed  brain,  their  position  would  be  less 
untenable.  But,  as  the  case  stands,  the  gradually  increas- 
ing intelligence  displayed  throughout  childhood  and  youth 
is  more  attributable  to  the  completion  of  the  cerebral  or- 
ganization than  to  the  individual  experiences — a  truth 
proved  by  the  fact  that  in  adult  life  there  is  sometimes  dis- 
played a  high  endowment  of  some  faculty  which,  during 
education,  was  never  brought  into  play.  Doubtless,  expe- 
riences received  by  the  individual  furnish  the  concrete  ma- 
terials for  all  thought.  Doubtless,  the  organized  and  semi- 
organized  arrangements  existing  among  the  cerebral  nerves 
can  give  no  knowledge  until  there  has  been  a  presentation 
of  the  external  relations  to  which  they  correspond.  And, 
doubtless,  the  child's  daily  observations  and  reasonings  aid 
the  formation  of  those  involved  nervous  connections  that 
are  in  process  of  spontaneous  evolution,  just  as  its  daily 


SPENCER'S  THEORY  OF  MIND.  515 

gambols  aid  the  development  of  its  limbs.  But  saying  this 
is  quite  a  different  thing  from  saying  that  its  intelligence  is 
wholly  produced  by  its  experiences.  That  is  an  utterly  in- 
admissible doctrine — a  doctrine  which  makes  the  presence 
of  a  brain  meaningless — a  doctrine  which  makes  idiotcy 
unaccountable. 

"In  the  sense,  then,  that  there  exist  in  the  nervous  sys- 
tem, certain  pre-established  relations  answering  to  relations 
in  the  environment,  there  is  truth  in  the  doctrine  of 
*  forms  of  intuition'  —  not  the  truth  which  its  defenders 
suppose,  but  a  parallel  truth.  Corresponding  to  absolute 
external  relations,  there  are  established  in  the  structure 
of  the  nervous  system  absolute  internal  relations — relations 
that  are  potentially  present  before  birth  in  the  shape  of 
definite  nervous  connections,  that  are  antecedent  to,  and 
independent  of,  individual  experiences,  and  that  are  auto- 
matically disclosed  along  with  the  first  cognitions.  And, 
as  here  understood,  it  is  not  only  these  fundamental  rela- 
tions which  are  thus  predetermined,  but  also  hosts  of  other 
relations  of  a  more  or  less  constant  kind,  which  are  con- 
genitally  represented  by  more  or  less  complete  nervous 
connections.  But  these  predetermined  internal  relations, 
though  independent  of  the  experiences  of  the  individual, 
are  not  independent  of  experiences  in  general :  they  have 
been  determined  by  the  experiences  of  preceding  organisms. 
The  corollary  here  drawn  from  the  general  argument  is 
that  the  human  brain  is  an  organized  register  of  infinitely 
numerous  experiences  received  during  the  evolution  of  life, 
or,  rather,  during  the  evolution  of  that  series  of  organisms 
through  which  the  human  organism  has  been  reached. 
The  effects  of  the  most  uniform  and  frequent  of  these  ex- 
periences have  been  successively  bequeathed,  principal  and 
interest ;  and  have  slowly  amounted  to  that  high  intelli- 
gence which  lies  latent  in  the  brain  of  the  infant — which 
the  infant  in  after-life  exercises  and  perhaps  strengthens 


516  OREATIOiT  OR  EVOLUTION? 

or  further  complicates,  and  which,  with  minute  additions, 
it  bequeaths  to  future  generations;  and  thus  it  happens 
that  the  European  inherits  from  twenty  to  thirty  cubic 
inches  more  brain  than  the  Papuan.  Thus  it  happens  that 
faculties,  as  of  music,  which  scarcely  exist  in  some  inferior 
human  races,  become  congenital  in  superior  ones..  Thus  it 
happens  that  out  of  savages  unable  to  count  up  to  the 
number  of  their  fingers,  and  speaking  a  language  contain- 
ing only  nouns  and  verbs,  arise  at  length  our  Newtons  and 
Shakespeares."  * 

The  learned  philosopher  has  here  dealt  with  two  hy- 
potheses, neither  of  which  he  considers  tenable  by  itself. 
The  first  is  that  the  individual  mind,  anterior  to  expe- 
rience, is  a  blank  ;  that  at  birth  there  exists  nothing  but  a 
passive  receptivity  of  impressions,  which  become  organized 
into  intelligence  by  experience.  The  other  hypothesis  is 
that  of  the  transcendental  school,  which  attributes  the 
growth  of  intelligence  wholly  to  implanted  intuitions, 
which  become  expanded  by  the  increase  of  mental  power. 
His  argument  is  put  thus  :  If  at  birth  the  mind  of  the  in- 
dividual is  a  blank,  and  it  becomes  capable  of  thought  or 
possessed  of  intelligence  by  experience,  beginning  with  a 
passive  receptivity  of  impressions,  and  going  on  to  their 
organization  into  intelligence  by  the  repetition  of  experi- 
ences and  their  increasing  complexity — why,  he  asks,  is 
not  a  horse  as  educable  as  a  man  ?  Why  do  not  the  cat 
and  the  dog,  reared  in  the  same  household  and  hearing 
human  beings  use  language  every  moment  of  their  lives, 
arrive  at  equal  degrees  and  kinds  of  intelligence  ?  In  the 
first  place,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  many  animals  are  educable 
beyond  their  natural  capacity  of  intelligence,  or  beyond  the 
point  at  which  they  would  arrive  without  such  education, 
to  a  very  remarkable  degree.     I  have  heard  a  credible  de- 

*  "Principles  of  Psychology,"  i,  §  208,  pp.  465-471. 


SPENCER  CBITICISED.  517 

scription  of  a  dog  which  would  ascend  to  a  chamber  and 
bring  down  an  article  that  he  had  been  told  to  bring. 
Many  repetitions  of  the  command  and  the  performance  had 
taught  the  animal  to  associate  the  name  of  the  article  which 
he  was  to  bring  down  with  the  act  which  he  was  to  per- 
form. While  I  am  writing,  a  bear  beneath  my  window  is 
going  through  perform-ances,  at  the  word  of  command, 
of  very  considerable  varieties  ;  actions  which  he  would  not 
do  if  he  had  not  been  trained  to  do  them.  The  trained 
war-horse  knows  the  meaning  of  the  different  airs  played 
on  the  bugle  upon  the  battle-field  or  the  parade-ground, 
and  instantly  charges  or  wheels  about,  without  waiting  to 
be  prompted  by  the  bit  or  the  spur.  Insects  can  be  trained, 
to  some  extent,  in  the  same  way  ;  birds  to  a  much  greater 
extent.  Is  the  explanation  of  these  capacities  to  be  found 
in  a  definitely  organized  nervous  system  as  the  all-impor- 
tant fact  without  which  an  assimilation  of  experiences  is 
inexplicable  ?  Grant  that,  as  we  advance  from  creatures  of 
very  low  to  creatures  of  very  high  intelligence,  we  find  a 
vast  increase  in  the  size  and  complexity  of  the  nervous  sys- 
tem taking  place  through  the  series,  until  we  arrive  at  its 
highest  and  most  complex  development  in  man.  What  is 
the  hypothesis  which  explains  the  difference  in  mental 
power  between  man  and  all  the  other  creatures  below  him 
in  the  capability  of  co-ordinating  impressions  and  perform- 
ing the  appropriate  actions  ?  It  is,  according  to  Mr.  Spen- 
cer, that  the  capability  implies  the  existence  of  certain 
nerves  arranged  in  a  certain  way  ;  that  where  this  arrange- 
ment does  not  exist  the  capability  is  not  found  ;  and  where 
it  exists  in  only  a  low  degree  the  capability  exists  only  in  the 
same  degree.  As  two  parallel  and  concurring  facts  these 
may  be  conceded.  But  why  are  not  these  facts  entirely 
consistent  with  another  hypothesis,  namely,  that  to  each 
creature,  along  with  its  specially  organized  nervous  system, 
there  has  been  given  by  divine  appointment  a  certain  de- 


518  CKEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

gree  of  innate  mental  power,  to  explain  whicli  we  must 
follow  the  impressions  produced  in  the  nervous  system  into 
their  transmutation  into  intelligence,  until  we  arrive  at  the 
limit  of  that  intelligence  ?  Mr.  Spencer's  answer  to  this 
inquiry  is  twofold  :  first,  that  the  experience-hypothesis, 
in  the  case  of  the  individual  creature,  or  the  constant  repe- 
tition of  the  impressions  and  the  appropriate  actions,  is 
insuflficient  to  account  for  what  takes  place,  without  recog- 
nizing the  fact  that  the  actions  are  dependent  on  the  nerv- 
ous structure,  without  which  the  impressions  would  not  be 
followed  by  the  actions ;  second,  that  the  nervous  structure 
in  the  different  races  of  animals  has  come  to  be  what  it  is  in 
each  race  by  gradual  modifications  and  increments  through 
the  process  of  evolution  of  organisms  out  of  one  another, 
and  that  these  accumulations  have  resulted  in  the  human 
brain,  which  has  the  highest  power  of  co-ordinating  the 
impressions  and  performing  the  appropriate  actions.  Then 
he  puts,  with  an  air  of  final  solution,  the  question,  "  What 
is  the  human  brain  ?  "  which  he  answers  in  his  own  way. 

His  mode  of  answering  this  question  is  that  the  brain 
is  an  organ  with  established  relations  among  its  parts,  which 
stand  for  so  many  established  relations  among  the  psychical 
changes.  I  understand  this  to  mean,  that  as  the  human 
brain,  in  the  process  of  animal  evolution,  has  come  to  have 
certain  constant  connections  among  the  fibers  of  the  cere- 
bral masses,  each  of  these  connections  answers  to  some  con- 
stant connection  of  phenomena  in  the  experiences  of  the 
race.  His  corollary  is  that  the  human  brain  is  an  organized 
register  of  infinitely  numerous  experiences  received  by  the 
race  during  the  evolution  of  life,  or  during  the  evolution  of 
that  series  of  organisms  through  which  the  human  organ- 
ism has  been  reached.  Each  infant  of  the  human  race,  to 
whom  has  descended  this  improved  and  perfect  brain,  has 
latent  in  that  organ  a  high  capacity  for  intelligence.  This 
it  begins  to  exercise  and  strengthen  and  furtlier  compli- 


VOLUME  OF  BRAm.  519 

cate  as  life  goes  on,  and  at  the  end  of  twenty  or  thirty  years 
the  individual  brain  is  fully  developed,  and  this  develop- 
ment, or  capacity  for  development,  the  individual  be- 
queaths with  minute  additions,  principal  and  interest,  to 
future  generations.  In  different  races  of  men  the  cubic 
bulk  of  the  brain  varies  greatly,  according  to  the  size  trans- 
mitted from  ancestors ;  and  so  certain  faculties  which 
scarcely  exist  in  some  races  become  congenital  in  others ;  and 
whereas  the  remote  ancestors  of  all  of  us  were  savages,  inca- 
pable even  of  conceiving  of  numbers,  and  possessing  but 
the  rudest  elements  of  language,  there  have  at  length  arisen 
our  Newtons  and  Shakespeares. 

This  hypothesis  leads  me  to  ask  a  question  and  to  state 
a  fact.  The  question  is.  What  is  it  in  the  infant  of  the 
most  developed  and  cultivated  race  that  constitutes  the 
high  intelligence  which  is  said  to  lie  latent  in  his  brain  ? 
In  other  words,  is  there  nothing  in  that  infant,  or  in  the 
adult  which  he  becomes,  but  a  brain  and  a  nervous  system 
of  a  highly  organized  and  complex  physical  structure  adapted 
to  receive  impressions  on  itself  from  without  ?  Are  the  expe- 
riences which  have  been  enjoyed  by  the  progenitors  of  the 
human  infant  or  by  preceding  organisms  registered  in  his 
brain,  and  is  his  capacity  of  intelligence  dependent  on  his 
having  inherited  the  same  or  nearly  the  same  volume  of 
brain  as  that  which  was  possessed  by  his  progenitors  ?  And 
does  the  intelligence  consist,  in  degree  or  in  kind,  in  noth- 
ing but  a  repetition  of  the  same  experiences  as  those 
through  which  his  progenitors  were  carried,  or  is  there  a 
something  in  him  to  which  his  individual  experiences  con- 
tribute the  mental  food  by  which  the  mind  is  nourished 
and  by  the  assimilation  of  which  its  individual  intellectual 
growth  becomes  possible  ? 

It  is  not  necessary  to  question  the  fact  that  individuals 
of  great  intellect,  the  Newtons  and  the  Shakespeares,  have 
had  or  may  have  had  large  brains ;  or  the  fact  that,  as  be- 


620  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

tween  races  of  men,  the  most  intelligent  have  brains  of 
greater  cubic  measure  than  the  less  intelligent.  But  it  has 
not  always  been  found  that  individuals  of  superior  intellect 
have  had  comparatively  larger  brains  than  other  individu- 
als, nor  that  those  who  have  had  very  large  brains  have 
transmitted  them  to  their  children.  The  important  fact 
to  which  I  meant  to  advert  is  that,  since  we  have  known 
much  about  the  human  brain  and  the  nervous  system  con- 
nected with  it,  it  has  not  been  found  that,  in  its  several 
parts  and  in  the  action  of  the  nerves  connected  with  it,  it 
has  been  differently  organized  and  acted  upon  in  the  lowest 
savages  from  what  we  know  of  it  in  the  European  and  the 
most  civilized  races.  There  is  a  difference  in  volume,  but 
not  in  the  organization  or  the  office  of  the  brain  in  differ- 
ent races  of  men,  as  there  is  in  different  individuals  of  the 
same  race.  The  fact  that  all  men,  since  they  became  a 
completed  type  of  animal,  however  they  originated  and  be- 
came men,  have  possessed  a  capacity  to  become  in  different 
degrees  intelligent  and  thinking  beings,  points  strongly  to 
the  conclusion  that  while  in  each  individual  there  is  a  nerv- 
ous system  so  organized  as  to  transmit  impressions  from  ex- 
ternal objects  to  the  central  physical  organ  called  the  brain, 
there  must  be  another  existence  in  that  individual,  of  a 
spiritual  and  intellectual  nature,  of  a  substance  that  is 
not  physical,  to  which  the  brain  supplies  the  materials  of 
thought,  thought  being  mental  cognition  of  an  idea.  If  I 
am  asked  for  the  proof  of  such  an  existence,  I  answer  that 
the  proof  is  consciousness,  as  I  define  it,  and  this  I  con- 
ceive is  the  highest  kind  of  proof. 

One  may  appeal  to  the  convictions  of  mankind  for  an 
answer  to  the  question.  What  is  the  highest  and  most  satis- 
factory kind  of  knowledge  that  any  of  us  possess  ?  The 
most  intelligent  man  may  be  mistaken  in  that  part  of  self- 
knowledge  that  relates  to  his  own  character  or  motives. 
Others  may  see  him  very  differently  from  the  light  in  which 


ANATOMY  OF  THE  MIND.  521 

lie  sees  himself,  and  they  may  be  right  and  he  may  be 
wrong.  He  may  think,  too,  that  he  knows  a  great  deal 
that  he  does  not  know  ;  but  no  intelligent  man  is  mistaken 
or  in  any  way  deluded  when  he  believes  in  his  own  exist- 
ence. No  man  in  his  waking  moments  and  in  his  right 
mind  ever  confounded  his  own  identity,  as  we  have  seen 
that  Lady  Macbeth  did  when  she  was  walking  in  her  sleep, 
with  the  identity  of  another  person.  No  man  in  his  right 
mind  loses  the  constant,  ever-present  sense  of  himself  as 
a  being  and  as  one  distinct  from  all  other  beings.  The 
reason  is  that  his  own  existence  is  certified  to  him  by  the 
most  unerring  of  witnesses,  one  who  can  not  lie,  because 
the  fact  of  one's  own  existence  is  the  fact  of  which  that 
witness  must  speak.  Of  all  other  facts  the  witness  may 
speak  falsely.  The  mind  can  not  speak  falsely  when  it 
speaks  to  us  of  our  own  existence,  for  the  witness  who  speaks 
and  the  person  spoken  to  are  one  and  the  same.  The  false- 
hood, if  there  could  be  a  falsehood,  would  be  instantly  de- 
tected. 

As  the  mind  certifies  to  itself  its  own  existence  by  the 
most  direct  and  the  highest  kind  of  proof,  so  it  certifies  to 
itself  the  powers  with  which  it  is  endowed  ;  and  this  brings 
me  to  the  anatomical  examination  of  the  structure  of  the 
mind.  I  shall  not  make  this  analysis  a  very  minute  one, 
but  shall  confine  it  to  those  distinct  elementary  powers 
which  are  constituted  by  systems,  as  the  powers  of  the 
bodily  organism  are  constituted  by  systems  distinguishable 
by  the  functions  which  they  perform.  In  the  bodily  or- 
ganism we  recognize  the  digestive  system,  the  system  of 
circulation  of  the  blood,  the  muscular  system,  the  nervous 
system,  the  sensory  system,  which  is  distributed  into  the  dif- 
ferent organs  of  sense,  the  male  and  female  systems  of  sex- 
ual generation,  and  the  female  system  of  gestation.  These 
several  systems,  acting  together  as  one  complex  mechanism 
endowed  with  the  mysterious  principle  of  life,  form  in  each 


522  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

human  being  of  either  sex  the  physical  existence  of  the  in- 
dividual. Acting  in  each  individual  of  either  sex  simul- 
taneously and  with  mutual  involved  interdependencies, 
they  form  a  whole  which,  in  its  several  parts  and  their 
functions,  may  be  likened  to  the  several  parts  and  functions 
in  one  of  those  machines  which  we  ourselves  construct — 
with  this  difference,  however,  that  in  one  life  is  present 
and  in  the  other  it  is  not.  The  fundamental  question  is 
whether  this  complex  animal  mechanism,  thus  constituted 
of  certain  physical  systems,  also  constitutes  during  this  life 
the  entire  individual.  If  so,  the  individual  existence  is  a 
unit,  and,  when  the  physical  organism  perishes  by  what  we 
call  death,  the  individual  existence  ceases.  If,  on  the  con- 
trary, we  have  satisfactory  proof  that  there  is,  during  this 
life,  in  each  individual  an  organized  and  extended  entity, 
composed,  like  the  systems  of  the  bodily  organisms,  of  certain 
systems  of  its  own  but  of  a  substance  that  is  not  material, 
then  the  existence  of  each  individual  is  a  dual  existence ; 
and  one  of  the  two  existences  now  associated  and  acting  to- 
gether may  be  dissolved  into  its  original  material  elements, 
while  the  other,  composed  of  a  different  substance,  may  be 
indissoluble  and  have  an  endless  life.  There  is  no  liiiddle 
ground  that  I  can  perceive  between  these  two  hypotheses. 
One  or  the  other  of  them  is  absolutely  true,  independent 
of  the  inquiry  as  to  the  mode  in  which  mind  came  to  ex- 
ist ;  for  after  going  through  with  all  the  reasoning  and  all 
the  proofs  that  are  supposed  to  show  its  origin  by  the  pro- 
cess called  evolution,  we  must  still  come  back  to  the  ques- 
tion of  what  mind  is  after  it  has  come  into  existence  ;  must 
determine  on  which  side  lies  the  preponderating  probability 
of  its  continuance  after  the  death  of  the  body ;  and  must 
accept  the  conclusion  of  its  destruction  or  cessation  when 
the  body  dies,  or  the  other  conclusion  that  it  is  unlike  the 
body  in  its  substance,  and  therefore  indestructible  by  the 
means  which  destroy  the  body.     For  this  reason  we  must 


MENTAL  SYSTEMS.  523 

examine  the  mind  for  proof  that  it  is  an  organism  of  a  spe- 
cial nature  because  composed  of  a  special  substance,  and 
this  proof  is  to  be  reached  bj  an  analysis  of  the  systems  of 
which  the  mind  is  composed.  I  select,  of  course,  for  the 
purposes  of  this  analysis,  any  individual  whose  physical  and 
mental  faculties  have  had  the  average  development  into  the 
condition  that  is  called  a  sound  mind  in  a  sound  body — 
mens  sana  in  corpora  sano,  I  shall  treat  incidentally  of 
the  condition  of  idiocy. 

"We  may  classify  the  distinct  systems  of  the  mind,  with 
their  several  functions,  as  easily  as  we  can  classify  the  dis- 
tinct systems  of  our  physical  structure  and  their  functions. 
I  have  seen  the  systems  of  the  mind  distributed  into  five  ; 
and  although  I  do  not  adopt  the  whole  analysis  made  by 
the  writer  to  whom  I  refer,  or  make  use  of  the  same  ter- 
minology, I  shall  follow  his  classification  because  it  is 
one  which  any  thinking  person  must  recognize  as  a  descrip- 
tion of  mental  powers  of  which  he  is  conscious.*  We  are 
all  aware  that  we  possess  the  following  mental  systems  in 
which  inhere  certain  elementary  powers  that  are  mental 
powers  : 

1.  A  sensory  system,  by  which  the  mind  takes  impres- 
sions from  matter. 

2.  A  system  of  intellectual  faculties,  such  as  reason, 
imagination,  reflection,  combination  of  ideas,  discrimina- 
tion between  different  ideas. 

3.  A  system  of  emotions,  or  susceptibilities  to  pleasure 
or  pain,  of  a  moral  and  intellectual  nature  as  distinguished 
from  the  pleasurable  or  painful  excitation  of  our  nerves. 

4.  A  system  of  desires,  which  prompt  us  to  wish  for 
and  acquire  some  good,  or  to  avoid  some  evil. 

5.  A  system  of  affections,  which  prompt  us  to  like  or 

*  I  have  allowed  Sophereus  to  follow  in  the  main  the  writer  to  whom  I 
have  already  referred  in  the  note  on  page  471 — Mr.  Bishop,  of  Florida. 


524  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

dislike  persons,  things,  situations,  and  whatever  is  attract- 
ive or  unattractive,  as  the  case  may  be. 

A  little  further  analysis  of  each  of  these  systems  will 
explain  why  they  are  respectively  to  be  thus  classified  as 
distinguishable  organic  ]30wers  or  functions  of  the  human 
mind : 

First.  The  mind  is  placed  as  a  recipient  in  correspond- 
ence with  the  material  universe  through  the  nerves  of  sen- 
sation and  the  special  corporeal  organs,  whereby  the  prop- 
erties of  matter  become  to  some  extent  known  to  us.  As 
the  power  of  the  physical  senses  to  obtain  for  us  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  properties  of  matter  is  limited,  even  when  our 
senses  are  in  the  utmost  state  of  their  normal  capacity, 
there  may  be  properties  of  matter  which  will  never  become 
known  to  us  in  our  present  existence.  But  certain  of  its 
properties  do  become  known  to  us,  and  we  are  perfectly 
aware  that  this  takes  place  through  our  physical  organs  of 
sense,  which  convey  to  our  mental  reception  certain  impres- 
sions. This  power  of  the  mind,  therefore,  to  receive  such 
impressions,  to  retain  and  transmute  them  into  thought,  is 
to  be  recognized  as  a  power  exerted  by  means  of  an  organic 
physical  contrivance  and  an  organic  mental  structure,  the 
two  acting  together,  the  resultant  being  the  mind's  faculty 
for  receiving  ideas  from  the  external  world.  Let  us  sup- 
pose, then,  that  the  bodily  senses  are  impaired  by  the  par- 
tial destruction  of  their  organs.  It  does  not  follow  that 
the  knowledge  which  has  been  derived  from  them,  when 
they  were  in  full  activity,  is  destroyed ;  all  that  happens 
is  that  we  acquire  no  more  of  such  knowledge  by  the  same 
means,  or  do  not  acquire  it  so  readily  and  completely.  If 
the  destruction  of  the  physical  senses  is  so  complete  as  it  be- 
comes when  death  of  the  whole  body  takes  place,  the  mate- 
rials derived  from  the  impressions  conveyed  to  the  mind 
from  external  objects  during  life  have  been  transmuted 
into  ideas  and  thoughts,  and,  as  that  which  holds  the  ideas 


MENTAL  SYSTEMS.  625 

and  the  thoughts  is  of  a  substance  unlike  in  nature  to  the 
substance  of  the  physical  organs  which  conyeyed  the  im- 
pressions, the  rational  conclusion  is  that  the  ideas  and 
thoughts  will  continue  to  be  held  by  it,  after  the  dissolu- 
tion of  the  body,  as  they  were  held  while  the  body  was  in 
full  life. 

Second,  I  recognize  in  the  mind  a  system  of  intellect- 
ual faculties.  Of  intellect,  I  should  say  that  the  ascer- 
tainment of  truth  is  its  primary  function ;  and  hence  I 
should  say  that  the  power  of  retaining  permanent  posses- 
sion of  truth  already  ascertained  is  the  means  by  which  we 
maintain  continued  ascertainment,  or  the  utilization  of 
truth  already  ascertained.*  For  the  exercise  of  this  power 
of  ascertaining,  holding,  applying,  and  expressing  truth — 
the  processes  of  intellect — we  have  three  recognized  faculties. 
These  are  the  intuitive  faculty ;  the  faculty  of  association 
or  combination  ;  and  the  introspective  faculty,  or  the  ca- 
pacity to  look  inward  upon  the  processes  of  our  own  minds. 
The  philosophers  who  maintain  that  all  our  knowledge  is 
derived  from  experience  admit  neither  the  intuitive  fac- 
ulty nor  the  fact  of  intuition.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
philosophers  who  maintain,  as  Mr.  Spencer  does,  that  the 
brain  of  every  infant  is  an  organized  register  of  the  experi- 
ences of  his  ancestors,  do  not  allow  of  the  existence  of  any 
intuitions  as  facts  in  the  individual  life  of  the  infant,  be- 
cause they  regard  the  individual  experiences  of  the  infant 
as  mere  repetitions  of  former  experiences  that  took  place  in 
its  progenitors.  But  rightly  regarded  the  true  meaning 
of  the  intuitive  faculty  is  this  :  that  at  the  instant  when  a 
new  sensory  impression  is  received  by  the  infant,  or  the 
adult,  there  is  an  innate  and  implanted  power  which  comes 
into  play,  by  which  is  asserted  the  reality  of  that  from 
which  the  sensory  impression  is  received.     This  power,  the 

"  Bishop. 


526  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

intuitive  faculty,  is  infallible.  It  was  ordained  as  the 
means  by  which  a  sensory  impression  becomes  to  us  a  real- 
ity. We  are  so  constructed,  mentally,  that  we  must  be- 
lieve those  primary  facts  which  the  sensory  impressions 
certify  to  us  to  be  facts.  On  the  veracity  of  this  certifica- 
tion we  are  absolutely  dependent,  because  we  can  not  con- 
tradict the  affirmations  of  reality  which  causation  makes 
to  our  intuitive  mental  perceptions.  On  this  veracity  we 
risk  our  lives  ;  we  could  not  be  safe  if  we  were  not  sub- 
jected to  this  belief.  Intuition,  therefore,  is  something 
anterior  to  experience  ;  it  is  that  power  by  which  the  first 
experience  and  the  last  become  to  us  the  means  of  belief  in 
a  reality.  This  is  a  power  that  can  belong  to  and  inhere 
in  a  spiritual  organism  alone.  We  must,  therefore,  recog- 
nize in  the  infant  this  original  implanted  endowment,  the 
capacity  to  be  mentally  convinced  of  realities  ;  and  while, 
in  order  to  the  first  exercise  of  this  capacity  there  must  be 
a  physical  organism  which  will  conduct  the  sensory  impres- 
sions to  the  brain  and  a  brain  that  will  receive  them,  the 
capacity  of  the  infant  to  have  its  first  conviction  of  the 
reality  certified  to  it  by  the  sensory  impression  is  at  once 
the  capacity  of  an  intellectual  being,  and  a  necessity  im- 
posed upon  him  by  the  law  of  his  existence.  Idiocy,  when 
complete,  is  the  absence  of  this  capacity,  by  reason  of  some 
failure  of  connection  between  the  brain,  as  the  central  re- 
cipient of  sensory  impressions,  and  the  mind  which  should 
receive  and  transmute  those  impressions  into  thought.  We 
are  scarcely  warranted  in  regarding  the  idiot  as  a  human 
animal  possessed  of  no  mind  whatever.  The  absolute  idiot 
should  be  defined  as  a  human  creature  whom  we  can  not 
educate  at  all — in  whom  we  can  awaken  no  intelligence  ; 
but  we  are  not  therefore  authorized  in  believing  that  there 
is  no  provision  whatever  for  the  development  of  intelligence 
after  the  mere  physical  life  of  the  body  is  ended.  Absolute 
idiocy,  or  what,  from  our  as  yet  imperfect  means  of  devel- 


IDIOTS.  527 

oping  intelligence  in  such  unfortunate  persons  we  must 
regard  as  at  present  absolute,  is  probably  very  rare.  Be- 
tween human  creatures  so  born  and  those  vast  multitudes 
in  whom  average  intelligence  is  developed  by  surrounding 
influences,  whatever  they  may  be,  there  are  various  degrees 
of  the  capacity  for  development ;  and  what  happens  in 
these  intermediate  cases  proves  that  there  are  different  de- 
grees in  which  the  connection  between  the  physical  and  the 
mental  organism  is  established  at  birth,  so  that  in  some  the 
connection  may  be  said  to  be  abnormal  and  imperfect, 
while  in  the  enormous  majority  it  is  at  least  so  nearly  nor- 
mal and  complete  that  intelligence  may  be  developed. 

Here,  then,  is  the  place  to  advert  to  Mr.  Spencer's  asser- 
tion that  the  doctrine  that  intelligence  in  the  human  being 
is  wholly  produced  by  experience  is  utterly  inadmissible ; 
that  it  makes  the  presence  of  a  brain  meaningless,  and 
idiocy  unaccountable.  A  doctrine  which  imputes  the  de- 
velopment of  intelligence  wliolly  to  the  experience  of  the 
individual  is  of  course  untenable.  There  must  be  a  brain 
and  a  nervous  system  ;  but  we  are  not  warranted,  in  the 
case  of  the  idiot,  in  assuming  that  he  has  a  differently  or- 
ganized brain  and  nervous  system  from  those  of  his  parents 
or  others  of  the  human  race,  as  Mr.  Spencer  appears  to  me 
to  assume.  What  we  are  warranted  in  believing  is  that 
while  the  brain  and  nervous  system  of  the  idiot  child  may 
be  just  as  complete  in  his  structure  as  in  those  of  the  par- 
ents, there  has  somehow  occurred,  from  some  cause,  ante- 
cedent in  some  cases  to  birth,  but  operating  after  birth  in 
other  cases,  a  failure  of  the  adequate  connection  between 
the  brain  and  the  mind,  so  that  intelligence  can  not  be  de- 
veloped at  all,  or  can  be  developed  but  partially.  The  in- 
dividual may  have  inherited  just  as  good  an  *' organized 
register"  of  the  experience  of  his  ancestors — ^just  as  good  a 
natural  brain  as  his  brothers  and  sisters  who  are  perhaps 
highly  intelligent  from  their  birth,  or  capable  of  becoming 


628  CREATIOI^  OR  EVOLUTION? 

intelligent.  Yet  lie  lacks  the  ability  to  co-ordinate  impres- 
sions and  to  i^erform  the  actions  appropriate  to  those  im- 
pressions, because  there  has  failed  to  be  established  in  him 
the  necessary  connection  between  the  impressions  and  the 
sensory  intellectual  system  which  constitutes  one  organic 
part  of  the  mind.  The  experiences,  however  often  re- 
peated, of  the  impressions  produced  by  his  physical  senses 
on  his  brain,  remain  there  as  corporeal  feelings.  They 
reach  no  further.  They  do  not  become  transmuted  into 
ideas,  and  so  intelligence  can  not  be  developed,  or  is  de- 
veloped but  to  a  very  feeble  extent.  Instead  of  saying  that 
"  the  gradually  increasing  intelligence  displayed  throughout 
childhood  is  more  attributable  to  the  completion  of  the 
cerebral  organization  than  to  the  individual  experiences," 
I  should  say  that  it  is  most  attributable  to  the  presence  of 
an  established  connection  between  the  function  of  the  cere- 
bral organization  and  the  mental  receptivity  of  impressions, 
which  is  not  merely  passive,  but  is  incessantly  active  be- 
cause incessantly  receiving,  and  that,  where  this  connection 
is  wanting,  the  receptivity,  although  it  may  exist,  can  not 
become  active,  and  so  intelligence  can  not  be  developed  in 
this  life.  But  there  may  be  another  state  of  existence,  in 
which  the  mind  of  the  idiot,  no  longer  dependent  on  a 
physical  organization  of  brain  and  nervous  system  for  the 
reception  of  ideas  and  for  intellectual  growth,  but  retaining 
its  capacity  for  mental  development,  may  begin  and  carry 
on  such  development  by  other  means  ;  whereas,  if  the  brain 
and  the  nervous  system  constitute  all  there  is  of  any  human 
being,  whether  bom  an  idiot  or  born  capable  of  intellectual 
growth  through  his  individual  experiences,  he  can  have  no 
future  after  that  brain  and  nervous  system  are  destroyed, 
unless  we  suppose  that  mind  is  something  that  has  been 
developed  out  of  matter  into  a  spiritual  existence — a  sup- 
position which  is  to  me  inconceivable. 

The  second  of  the  intellectual  faculties  is  the  associa- 


INTROSPECTION-.  629 

tive,  or  that  intuitive  power  by  which  ideas  are  combined 
and  associated  or  held  in  disjunction  and  separation.  I 
regard  this  as  an  intuitive  faculty,  because,  as  our  obser- 
vation teaches  us,  its  presence  and  power,  manifested  at  the 
first  dawning  of  infantile  intelligence,  are  attested  by  every 
exercise  of  the  organs  through  which  the  external  world 
reaches  our  minds,  to  the  last  moment  of  our  mortal  exist- 
ence. Experience  is,  of  course,  necessary  to  the  first  action 
of  this  intuitive  faculty.  This  is  only  another  way  of  say- 
ing that  there  must  occur  a  sensory  impression  upon  the 
brain  which  becomes  transmuted  into  the  idea  of  the  ex- 
ternal object,  and  then  a  repetition  of  that  impression  pro- 
duces a  repetition  of  the  idea,  and  the  associative  faculty 
combines  or  disjoins  them.  But  unless  there  exists  an  in- 
tuitive power,  inherent  in  the  intellective  system,  whereby 
the  first  idea  and  the  second  can  be  associated  and  com- 
pared, there  can  be  no  knowledge,  no  acquisition  of  truth, 
because  the  sensory  impressions  will  stop  in  the  brain  as  so 
many  feelings  excited  through  the  nervous  system,  instead 
of  being  transmuted  into  thought. 

The  introspective  faculty,  on  the  other  hand,  does  not 
deal  solely  with  sensory  impressions,  or  with  the  ideas 
which  they  have  suggested.  It  is  that  power  of  the  mind 
by  which  it  can  look  inward  upon  itself.  This  is  seem- 
ingly a  paradox ;  but  nevertheless,  the  existence  of  such  a 
faculty  is  a  necessary  hypothesis,  not  only  because  we  are 
conscious  of  it,  but  because  without  it  we  could  have  no 
means  of  analyzing  our  own  mental  structure,  although  we 
could  make  some  very  partial  analysis  of  the  mind  of  an- 
other individual  by  studying  his  actions.  As  regards  our- 
selves, it  is  as  if  our  visual  organs  possessed  the  power  of 
looking  at  the  process  by  which  an  image  of  an  external 
object  is  impressed  upon  the  retina  and  is  thence  transmit- 
ted to  the  brain,  where  the  sensory  impression  is  produced. 
This,  of  course,  is  a  physical  impossibility.     All  we  can  do 


530  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

is  to  examine  tlie  physical  structure  of  the  eye,  with  its 
wonderful  provision  of  lenses  and  other  means  for  the  re- 
ception and  the  effect  of  light,  and  to  reason  upon  what  we 
can  discover  that  the  process  of  what  is  called  seeing  must 
be  thus  or  thus.  But  that  process  itself  we  can  not  see  by 
the  same  organs  by  which  it  is  carried  on.  In  the  case  of 
the  mind,  however — and  herein  is  one  of  the  remarkable 
proofs  of  its  unlikeness  as  an  organism  to  the  bodily  or- 
ganism— there  is  a  power  to  witness,  to  observe,  to  be  sen- 
sible of  its  own  operations.  This  power,  like  all  the  other 
mental  powers,  may  be  very  feeble  in  some  individuals,  for 
want  of  exercise,  but  in  others,  from  long  and  frequent  ex- 
ercise, it  may  become  exceedingly  vigorous,  and  be  the 
means  of  advancing  mental  philosophy  if  its  observations 
are  preserved  and  recorded.  It  is  one  of  the  systems  which, 
as  a  whole,  constitute  the  spiritual  organism  to  which  we 
give  the  name  of  mind.  Such  a  capacity  can  not  be  predi- 
cated of  a  physical  organism.  It  is  impossible  for  us  to 
conceive  of  a  machine  standing  and  looking  upon  its  own 
operations,  speculating  upon  their  improvement,  or  think- 
ing of  the  relation  of  its  mechanism  to  the  human  author 
of  its  being.  It  is  equally  impossible  for  us  to  think  of  the 
body  of  man  contemplating  its  own  existence,  or  being  sen- 
Bible  of  it ;  but  it  is  perfectly  easy  to  conceive  of  its  being 
known  to  the  mind  that  inhabits  it,  which  takes  cognizance 
both  of  its  own  operations  and  of  the  operations  of  the 
physical  organism,  reflects  upon  them  separately  or  in  their 
action  upon  one  another,  and  spontaneously  refers  both  to 
an  author. 

Third.  I  have  placed  third  in  the  category  of  mental 
systems  the  system  of  emotions  or  susceptibilities  to  mental 
pleasure  or  pain,  as  distinguished  from  the  pleasurable  or 
painful  excitation  of  our  nervous  system.  No  one  can 
doubt  that,  however  powerful  may  be  the  influence  upon 
our  mental  states  of  physical  pain  or  physical  sensations 


MENTAL  PLEASUPwE  OR  PAIN.  531 

that  are  pleasurable,  there  is  such  a  thing  as  mental  pain 
and  mental  pleasure,  satisfaction  or  dissatisfaction,  wholly 
unconnected  with  and  in  no  way  dependent  upon  our  cor- 
poreal feelings,  present  or  past.  It  is  from  this  suscepti- 
bility to  mental  pain  or  pleasure  that  we  come  to  have  the 
idea  of  goodness  or  badness,  which  is  originally  a  classifica- 
tion of  the  qualities  of  external  things  as  good  or  bad  ;  the 
good  being  those  which  affect  us  pleasurably,  and  the  bad 
those  which  affect  us  painfully.  By  our  mental  organiza- 
tion we  are  placed  in  such  correspondence  with  the  mate- 
rial universe,  that  things  apart  from  ourselves  affect  us 
agreeably  or  disagreeably ;  sights,  sounds,  odors,  and  tastes 
give  us  pleasure  or  pain.  We  are  also  placed  in  correspond- 
ence with  the  spiritual  universe,  and  thereby  certain  acts, 
relations,  and  traits  of  character  give  us  pleasure,  or  the 
reverse.  In  process  of  time,  the  youth  whose  mental  sys- 
tems are  in  the  course  of  expansion  comes  to  perceive  that 
his  own  acts  give  him  pleasure  or  pain,  and  hence  he  de- 
rives the  perception  of  good  or  bad  qualities  in  himself. 
Moral  goodness  in  ourselves — ^goodness  of  disposition,  of 
intention,  of  volition,  of  habit — is  found  to  be  distinct  from 
physical  and  intellectual  goodness  ;  and  thus  the  conscious- 
ness of  moral  goodness  becomes  the  intellectual  faculty  to 
which  moral  commands  can  be  addressed,  with  a  prospect 
that  the  connection  between  obedience  and  happiness  will 
be  perceived.  This  susceptibility  to  mental  pain  or  pleas- 
ure, from  the  qualities  of  external  things,  from  the  acts  and 
dispositions  of  other  persons,  and  from  our  own,  is  one  that 
can  inhere  in  a  mental  organization,  but  it  can  not  possibly 
inhere  in  a  physical  organism.  The  physical  organism  is 
undoubtedly  the  means  by  which  the  mental  susceptibility 
to  pleasure  or  pain  is  reached  from  the  external  universe ; 
but,  unless  there  is  a  mental  organism  to  feel  the  pleasure 
or  the  pain,  the  action  of  the  physical  organization  is  noth- 
ing but  the  excitation  of  the  nervous  system.  I,  therefore, 
24 


532  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

make  a  distinct  class  among  the  mental  systems,  and  assign 
to  it  the  faculty  of  experiencing  mental  pleasure  or  mental 
pain  as  a  capacity  distinct  from  the  pleasurable  or  painful 
excitation  of  our  nerves. 

Fourth.  In  the  category  of  mental  systems  may  be  placed 
those  desires  which  lead  us  to  wish  for  and  striye  to  obtain 
some  good  or  to  avoid  some  evil.  This,  surely,  is  not  to 
be  regarded  as  anything  but  an  intellectual  perception  of 
what  is  to  us  a  good  or  an  evil.  It  is  a  structural  capacity 
of  the  soul  which,  after  an  experience  of  that  which  we 
learn  to  be  good  for  us,  or  the  reverse  of  good,  is  always 
prompting  us  to  take  the  steps  or  to  perform  the  acts  which 
will  insure  a  repetition  of  that  experience,  in  the  acquisi- 
tion of  further  good  or  the  avoidance  of  further  evil.  Its 
operations  may  be  perverted.  We  may,  from  bad  habits  or 
erroneous  ideas  of  good  and  evil,  pursue  objects  that  are 
pernicious.  But  whether  we  strive  for  that  which  is  truly 
good,  or  is  deceptively  regarded  as  a  good,  we  are  perpetu- 
ally acting  under  the  impulse  of  a  desire  that  is  implanted 
in  us,  and  that  operates  as  a  desire  whether  its  objects  are 
worthy  or  unworthy,  beneficial  or  injurious,  noxious  or  in- 
noxious to  our  moral  health. 

Fifth,  and  lastly,  we  may  classify  the  affections  as  one 
of  the  structural  systems  of  our  spiritual  existence.  It  is 
that  part  of  our  natures  that  makes  us  like  or  dislike  both 
persons  and  things  ;  and,  in  regard  to  the  former,  it  is  the 
capacity  for  love  in  its  high  distinction  from  the  physical 
appetite  of  sexual  passion.  The  range  of  its  operation  is 
most  various  and  multiform,  but  throughout  all  of  its 
operations  it  is  a  spiritual  capacity,  implanted  in  us  for 
our  happiness  as  spiritual  beings. 

If  it  is  objected  that  this  is  an  arbitrary  classification — 
that  as  an  analysis  of  structural  systems  in  our  mental  or- 
ganization it  bears  no  analogy  to  the  anatomical  explora- 
tion and  classification  of  the  structural  systems  of  our  phys- 


CONTRASTED  THEORIES  OF  MIND.  533 

ieal  organism — the  answer  is,  that  in  regard  to  the  latter 
we  make  the  examination  by  the  exercise  of  our  corporeal 
senses,  chiefly  by  the  visual  organs,  as  we  do  in  the  case  of 
all  other  organized  matter.  In  analyzing  the  structural 
organization  of  our  minds,  we  are  examining  a  subject  that 
is  not  laid  bare  to  the  inspection  of  any  of  our  corporeal 
organs  ;  the  scalpel  in  the  hand  of  the  dissector  can  afford 
us  no  aid  in  this  investigation,  but  the  inspection  must  be 
carried  on  by  turning  the  eye  of  the  mind  inward  upon 
itself.  This  we  are  mentally  constituted  to  do.  While, 
therefore,  it  may  be  true  that  the  classification  which  I 
have  made,  or  which  may  have  been  made  by  others,  of  the 
structural  mental  systems,  is  in  one  sense  arbitrary,  and 
while  in  any  method  of  describing  them  they  may  run  into 
or  overlap  one  another  in  a  complex  organism,  it  will  al- 
ways remain  true  that  the  mind  is  capable  of  such  exami- 
nations, and  that  the  analysis,  however  given,  is  useful  to 
the  comprehension  of  the  mind  as  an  organized  and  ex- 
tended entity.  No  one  can  carry  on  this  mental  examina- 
tion without  perceiving  that  he  is  examining  a  something 
which  has  an  independent  existence  and  a  life  of  its  own, 
whether  he  supposes  it  to  have  been  evolved  out  of  organ- 
ized matter,  or  embraces  the  idea  of  its  distinct  and  special 
creation  by  an  exercise  of  the  Divine  Will. 

The  two  main  hypotheses  concerning  the  origin  of  mind 
may  now  be  contrasted.  In  the  long  process  of  develop- 
ment of  animal  organisms  out  of  one  another  there  come 
to  be,  it  is  said,  higher  and  higher  degrees  of  intelligence, 
as  the  nervous  system  becomes  more  and  more  capable  of 
complex  impressions,  until  we  arrive  at  the  consummate 
physical  organization  and  the  supreme  intelligence  of  the 
human  race.  The  physical  organization  is  open  to  our  ex- 
amination, and  we  find  the  human  brain  divided  into  cere- 
bral masses,  with  ganglia  of  sensory  nerves  extending  to 
the  external  sensory  organs.     Intelligence  is  the  faculty  of 


534:  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

comprehending  "by  previous  preparation  the  combinations 
of  impressions  made  on  the  brain  through  the  sensory 
nerves.  The  brain  being  an  organized  register  in  which 
the  experiences  of  progenitors  have  accumulated  a  high  de- 
gree of  this  faculty,  each  human  infant  born  into  the  world 
comes  into  it  with  a  prepared  capacity  to  acquire  the  com- 
binations of  impressions  produced  in  his  individual  expe- 
rience. Transmitted  from  generation  to  generation,  this 
inherited  capacity  becomes  the  means  by  which  each  indi- 
vidual manifests  and  enjoys  what  we  call  intelligence  ;  and 
the  resulting  aggregate  of  all  the  faculties  thus  called  into 
exercise  is  what  we  denominate  mind.  It  must  be  observed, 
however,  that  this  theory  or  explanation  of  the  origin  of 
mind,  rejecting  the  hypothesis  of  its  special  creation  as  a 
being  of  a  spiritual  nature,  assumes  it  to  be  a  something 
which  has  been  developed  out  of  the  growth  and  improve- 
ment of  a  physical  organism.  When  you  inquire  whether 
the  nature  of  this  something  is  supposed  to  be  a  product  of 
a  different  substance  from  matter,  although  developed  out 
of  matter,  you  are  left  without  an  answer  ;  and  when  you 
press  the  inquiry  whether  a  spiritual  existence  can  be  con- 
ceived as  having  grown  out  of  the  action  of  a  physical  or- 
ganism, you  are  told  that  there  are  no  means  of  determin- 
ing what  a  spiritual  existence  is,  because  there  is  nothing 
with  which  you  can  compare  it  so  as  to  ascertain  what  it 
resembles  or  what  it  does  not  resemble.  Or  if  there  are 
some  who  accept  the  evolution  theory  of  the  origin  of  mind, 
and  who  think  it  possible  that  a  spiritual  existence  can 
owe  its  origin  to  the  action  of  matter  without  any  inter- 
vention of  a  creating  power  purposely  giving  existence  to  a 
spiritual  essence,  you  have  to  ask  a  question  to  which  you 
can  only  get  this  answer  :  that  it  has  pleased  the  Almighty 
Being  to  establish  a  system  by  which  a  spiritual  in  contra- 
distinction to  a  physical  existence  has  been  developed  in 
countless  ages  out  of  the  action  of  material  substances  or- 


CONTRASTED  THEORIES  OF  MIND.  535 

ganized  into  definite  systems  and  endowed  with  the  princi- 
ple of  life.  Those  who  assume  this  hypothesis  must  neces- 
sarily assume  also  that  the  spiritual  existence  is,  after  it  has 
come  into  being,  an  existence  distinct  from  the  physical 
organism,  although  generated  out  of  it,  and  then  they  must 
encounter  the  further  inquiry  as  to  the  probability  of  the 
supposed  method  of  production  resorted  to  by  the  Supreme 
Being. 

More  than  once  in  the  course  of  our  colloquies  I  have 
had  occasion  to  say  that,  in  all  our  inquiries  of  this  nature, 
whether  in  regard  to  the  origin  of  our  physical  organism  or 
that  of  our  mental  existence,  we  must  constantly  bear  in 
mind  the  unbounded  capacity  of  the  Creator  to  adopt  any 
method  of  production  whatever ;  that  it  is  just  as  much 
within  his  power  to  call  things  of  the  most  opposite  natures 
into  existence  by  a  single  word  as  it  is  to  establish  methods 
by  w^hich  they  shall  be  developed  through  innumerable  ages 
of  what  we  call  time.  That  the  Being  who  is  supposed  to 
preside  over  the  universe  and  to  hold  this  unlimited  power 
is  an  hypothesis  I  readily  admit ;  but  I  affirm  that  his  exist- 
ence and  attributes  are  necessary  postulates,  without  which 
there  can  be  no  reasoning  concerning  the  origin  of  any- 
thing. Whether  that  Being  exists  and  possesses  the  at- 
tributes which  we  impute  to  him  I  have  all  along  said  is  a 
matter  of  which  we  must  be  satisfied  by  independent  proofs 
before  we  undertake  to  investigate  his  probable  methods. 

The  hypothesis  of  the  origin  of  mind  which  I  now  mean 
to  contrast  with  that  of  the  evolutionists  may  be  stated  as 
follows  :  It  is  a  rational  deduction,  from  all  that  we  know 
of  our  physical  organism,  that  procreation  of  new  individu- 
als of  that  organism  by  the  sexual  union  of  male  and  female 
was  established  as  the  means  of  continuing  the  species  of 
animal  known  as  man.  When  or  how  established  is  not 
a  material  part  of  the  inquiry  that  I  now  make.  It  may 
have  been  that  the  division  of  the  sexes  came  about  by  a 


536  CEEATIOl!T  OR  EVOLUTION? 

very  slow  process,  or  it  may  have  been  by  tbe  aboriginal 
creation  of  a  completed  pair,  male  and  female.  However 
or  whenever  it  came  to  exist,  there  came  to  be  one  uniform 
method  of  bringing  into  existence  new  individuals  of  a 
peculiar  and  perfectly  distinguishable  animal  type.  If  we 
confine  our  attention  to  the  physical  organism  of  man,  it 
is  perfectly  apparent  that  when  procreation  and  gestation 
take  place  they  happen  because  of  the  established  law  that 
a  new  individual  of  this  species  of  animal  shall  be  produced 
by  the  sexual  union  of  two  other  individuals,  male  and  fe- 
male, and  that  the  new  individual  shall  have  the  same  phys- 
ical organism  as  the  parents.  A  new  physical  life  thus 
springs  out  of  two  other  physical  lives  by  a  process  the 
secret  of  which  we  can  not  detect,  although  we  can  trace  it 
through  some  of  its  stages  so  far  as  to  see  that  there  is  a 
secret  process  by  which  two  physical  organisms  give  exist- 
ence to  another  physical  organism  of  the  same  type  and 
having  the  same  principle  of  life. 

As  the  ncAV  individual  animal  grows  into  further  devel- 
opment, we  find  that  along  with  his  animal  organism  and 
united  with  it  by  a  tie  which  we  can  not  see,  but  about 
which  we  can  reason,  there  is  apparently  present  a  kind  of 
life  that  is  something  more  than  the  life  of  the  body.  The 
further  we  carry  our  investigations  of  the  phenomena  which 
indicate  the  existence  of  this  mental  life,  the  more  we  be- 
come convinced  that  it  is  the  life  of  a  spiritual  organism. 
As  the  Creator  had  the  power  to  give  existence  to  the  cor- 
poreal organism,  why  had  he  not  an  equal  power  to  give 
existence  to  a  spiritual  organism?  If  he  established  the 
law  of  sexual  union  between  a  male  and  a  female  in  order 
to  perpetuate  the  type  of  animal  to  which  they  belong — the 
law  which  gives  existence  to  a  new  individual  of  that  animal 
type  every  time  that  a  new  conception  and  a  new  birth  take 
place — why  should  he  not  have  established  the  collateral 
law  that  every  time  there  is  a  new  birth  of  an  infant  there 


LAW  OF  PHYSICAL  AND  OF  MENTAL  EXISTENCE.   537 

shall  come  into  existence  a  spiritual  entity  which  shall  be 
united  to  the  corporeal  organism  for  a  time,  thus  consti- 
tuting in  that  infant  a  dual  existence  which  makes  his 
whole  individuality  during  this  life  ?  If  we  suppose  that 
the  physical  organism  of  our  double  natures  was  left  to  be 
worked  out  by  a  very  slow  process,  by  which  physical  or- 
ganisms are  developed  out  of  one  another — or  by  which  we 
theoretically  suppose  them  to  have  been  so  developed — why 
is  it  necessary  to  suppose  that  our  spirits  or  souls  have  been 
developed  in  the  same  way  or  by  an  analogous  method  ? 
What  reason  have  we  to  believe  that  the  Creator  works  by 
the  same  methods  in  the  spiritual  world,  or  by  methods 
that  are  of  the  same  nature  as  those  which  we  think  we  can 
discover  to  be  his  methods  in  giving  existence  to  corporeal 
organisms  ?  The  two  realms  of  spirit  and  matter  are  so 
completely  unlike  that  we  are  not  compelled  to  believe  that 
the  methods  by  which  creation  of  organisms  of  the  two 
kinds  are  effected  by  the  Almighty  are  necessarily  or  prob- 
ably the  same. 

In  order  to  be  clearly  understood  I  will  now  repeat  my 
hypothesis  in  a  distinct  form.  I  assume  the  existence  of  a 
pair  of  animals  of  the  human  type,  male  and  female,  en- 
dowed with  the  power  of  producing  new  individuals  of  the 
same  type.  In  their  physical  organisms  is  established  the 
law  of  procreation,  and  in  the  female  counterpart  of  that  or- 
ganism is  established  the  concomitant  law  of  conception  and 
parturition.  Thus  far  provision  is  made  for  the  production 
of  a  new  individual  physically  organized  like  the  parents.  In 
those  parents  there  is  also  established  another  law,  by  the 
operation  of  which  the  same  process  which  results  in  the 
production  of  the  new  individual  animal  organism  brings 
into  existence  a  spiritual  organism,  which  is  united  with  and 
becomes  the  companion  of  the  physical  organism  so  long  as 
the  latter  shall  continue  to  live.  These  laws  established  in 
the  first  pair  and  in  every  succeeding  pair  continue  to  op- 


538  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

erate  through  eYery  succeeding  generation.  Perhaps  it  will 
be  said  that  this  attributes  the  production  of  a  spiritual  or- 
ganism to  a  physical  process  ;  but,  in  truth,  it  does  no  more 
than  to  assert  the  simultaneous  production  of  the  two  ex- 
istences. It  is  not  necessary  to  assume  that  the  foetus 
which  becomes  at  birth  the  human  infant  is  before  birth 
animated  by  a  soul ;  for  it  is  not  necessary  to  suppose,  nor 
is  it  apparently  true,  that  the  physical  organism  is  complete 
until  birth  takes  place  and  the  breath  of  life  enters  the 
lungs,  thus  constituting  a  new  life  other  than  that  of  the 
foetus  or  the  unborn  child,  although  the  one  is  a  continua- 
tion of  the  other.  At  whateyer  point  of  time  the  complete 
animal  organism  is  in  a  condition  to  be  obseryed  so  that  we 
can  say  here  is  a  liying  child,  at  that  point  we  begin  to 
perceiye  a  capacity  to  receiye  impressions  from  the  external 
world  without  the  connection  that  has  theretofore  existed 
between  the  unborn  child  and  the  maternal  system.  This 
capacity  must  either  be  attributed  to  the  indiyidual  experi- 
ence of  the  infant,  so  that  without  experience  of  his  own  he 
can  not  begin  to  be  possessed  of  a  growing  intelligence,  or 
it  must  be  imputed  to  an  innate  and  implanted  power  resi- 
dent in  a  spiritual  organism  that  comes  into  exercise  when- 
eyer  the  physical  organism  has  begun  to  draw  the  breath  of 
life. 

The  eyolution  hypothesis  of  the  origin  of  the  human 
mind  necessarily  leayes  its  nature  in  an  indeterminate  state 
that  will  not  satisfy  the  requirements  of  sound  reasoning. 
In  one  mode  of  stating  and  reasoning  upon  this  hypothesis 
it  is  assumed  that  there  is  not  now  and  neyer  was  a  mental 
existence  that  was  created  in  each  indiyidual  of  the  race  at 
his  birth  ;  but  that  at  some  yery  remote  period  in  the  his- 
tory of  successiye  animal  organisms  there  was  produced  an 
animal  of  a  highly  deyeloped  nervous  structure,  capable  of 
intelligence  by  reason  of  a  superior  power  of  receiying  phys- 
icul  impressions  and  co-ordinating  them  into  states  of  con- 


DUALITY  OF  OUR  PRESENT  EXISTENCE.       539 

sciousness  which  correspond  to  the  physical  feelings ;  and 
to  the  perpetually  recurring  series  of  these  states  of  con- 
sciousness we  give  the  name  of  mind.  This  capacity  of  in- 
telligence is  transmitted  from  parents  to  offspring,  the  ex- 
periences of  the  former  being  registered  in  the  brain  of  the 
latter ;  but  however  complete  may  be  the  inherited  nervous 
structure,  and  however  great  the  capacity  for  intelligence, 
mind  in  each  individual  of  the  race  is  evidenced  by  nothing 
but  a  constant  succession  and  variation  of  certain  states  of 
feelings  produced  in  the  nervous  structure. 

Against  this  view  we  may  place  what  we  know  from 
constant  observation.  We  know  that  it  has  been  ordained, 
as  a  consequence  of  the  sexual  union  of  two  individuals  of 
opposite  sex,  there  shall  come  into  existence  a  new  indi- 
vidual of  the  same  physical  organism  as  the  parents.  Of 
the  interior  process  by  which  this  product  is  effected  we 
must  remain  ignorant,  but  about  the  fact  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  That  fact  is,  that  by  the  union  of  certain  vesicles 
contributed  by  each  of  the  parents  there  results  a  new  indi- 
vidual organism.  We  know  further  that  simultaneously 
with  the  complete  production  of  the  new  physical  organism, 
there  comes  into  being,  and  is  incorporated  with  it,  an  exist- 
ence that  we  are  compelled  by  the  phenomena  which  it 
manifests  to  regard  as  a  non-physical  and  a  spiritual  organ- 
ism. Of  the  process  by  which  this  distinct  existence  is 
effected,  we  must  remain  as  ignorant  as  we  are  of  the  pro- 
cess by  which  the  physical  organism  was  made  to  result 
from  the  sexual  union  of  the  parents.  But  of  the  fact 
there  can  be  no  more  doubt  in  the  one  case  than  in  the 
other.  In  every  instance  of  a  new  birth  of  a  perfect  infant, 
we  know  that  there  results  a  dual  existence  in  the  same 
individual ;  the  one  manifested  by  physical,  the  other  by 
mental  phenomena.  To  argue  that  the  mental  and  spirit- 
ual existence  grew  out  of  an  improved  and  improving  phys- 
ical organism  in  long-past  ages,  and  became  an  adjunct 


540  CEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

to  that  organism  after  it  had  attained  a  certain  develop- 
ment, without  any  intervention  of  the  creating  power  at 
each  new  birth  of  an  individual  infant,  is  to  limit  the  power 
of  the  Creator  in  a  realm  wherein  the  subject  of  his  creating 
power  is  essentially  unlike  the  subject  with  which  he  deals 
when  he  deals  with  physical  organisms.  In  all  reasoning 
upon  the  origin  and  nature  of  the  human  mind,  the  bound- 
less power  of  the  Creator  must  be  assumed.  In  judging  of 
the  probabilities  of  his  methods  of  action,  it  is  the  safest 
course  to  be  guided  by  what  we  can  see  takes  place  at  every 
new  birth  of  a  human  infant.  The  physical  organism  re- 
sults from  the  operation  of  a  certain  law.  The  mental  or- 
ganism results,  it  is  alike  rational  to  presume,  from  the 
operation  of  a  certain  other  law.  How  either  of  these  laws 
operates  we  are  not  permitted  to  know,  but  we  can  as  safely 
infer  the  one  as  the  other,  from  what  is  open  to  our  obser- 
vation. 

I  shall  now  touch  briefly  upon  another  argument,  the 
foundation  of  which  is  to  be  tested  by  historical  facts  into 
the  truth  of  which  I  shall  not  here  inquire,  because  they 
must,  for  the  purposes  for  which  I  use  them,  be  assumed. 
The  immortality  of  the  human  soul  is  said  to  have  been 
proved  by  a  Divine  revelation.  This  great  fact  is  supposed 
to  be  established  by  evidence  of  a  character  quite  different 
from  that  which  convinces  us  of  the  existence  and  attri- 
butes of  the  Almighty.  But,  assuming  revelation  to  be  a 
fact,  it  has  an  important  bearing  upon  the  subject  of  this 
essay,  because  the  question  arises,  for  what  conceivable  rea- 
son the  Almighty  should  have  made  to  us  a  revelation  of 
our  immortality,  through  the  direct  testimony  of  a  compe- 
tent witness,  if  we  are  not  spiritual  beings.  Information 
of  a  fact  supposes  that  there  was  a  person  to  be  informed. 
Concurrently  with  the  consciousness  which  assures  us  of  our 
personality,  we  have  the  assurance  of  our  immortality  cer- 
tified to  us  by  a  messenger  expressly  authorized  to  give  us 


REVELATION.  541 

the  information.  If  the  mind,  or  that  part  of  our  indi- 
viduality which  we  call  the  soul,  is  in  its  origin  and  nature 
nothing  but  what  the  evolution  theory  supposes,  what  was 
there  to  be  informed  of  immortality,  or  of  anything  else  ? 
The  possibility  and  certainty  of  an  existence  after  the  death 
of  the  body  is  a  conviction  that  must  exercise  great  influ- 
ence over  the  conduct  of  men  in  this  life.  It  is  consistent 
with  the  whole  apparent  scheme  of  the  revelation  to  sup- 
pose that  it  was  made  for  a  twofold  purpose  :  first,  to  cause 
men  to  lead  better  lives  in  this  world  than  they  might  have 
led  without  this  information  and  conviction  ;  and,  secondly, 
to  form  them  for  greater  happiness  in  another  world.  The 
first  of  these  purposes  might  have  been  effectuated  by  caus- 
ing men  to  believe  in  their  own  immortality,  notwithstand- 
ing the  belief  might  be  a  delusion  because  there  is  no  being 
capable,  in  fact,  of  any  existence  after  the  life  of  the  body 
is  ended.  But  such  a  method  of  action  is  hardly  to  be  im- 
puted, to  the  Creator  and  Supreme  Governor  of  the  uni- 
verse, according  to  the  ideas  of  his  character  which  natural 
religion  alone  will  give  us.  It  is  not  in  accordance  with 
rational  conceptions  of  his  attributes  to  suppose  that  he  de- 
ludes his  rational  creatures  with  assurances  or  apparent 
proofs  of  something  that  is  not  true  for  the  sake  of  making 
them  act  as  if  it  were  true.  When  we  find  ourselves  run- 
ning into  a  hypothesis  of  this  kind,  we  may  be  pretty  sure 
that  we  are  departing  from  correct  principles  of  reasoning. 
In  regard  to  the  second  of  the  supposed  purposes  for  which 
the  revelation  of  immortality  was  made — to  form  men  for 
greater  happiness  in  another  state  of  existence — it  is  quite 
obvious  that  the  supposed  scheme  of  the  revelation  is  a 
mere  delusion,  if  we  are  not  beings  capable  of  a  continued 
spiritual  existence  after  the  death  of  our  bodies.  It  is  there- 
fore a  matter  of  great  consequence  to  determine  what  the 
evolution  theory  of  the  origin  and  nature  of  the  human 
mind  makes  us  out  to  be. 


542  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

I  have  never  seen  any  statement  of  that  theory  that 
does  not  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  man  is  a  highly  devel- 
oped animal  organism,  whose  mental  existence  is  not  some- 
thing created  in  each  individual  of  the  race,  and  of  a  sub- 
stance and  organized  structure  different  from  the  physical 
organism,  but  whose  mental  phenomena  are  merely  exhibi- 
tions and  effects  of  occurrences  taking  place  in  the  physic- 
al system,  and  assuming  the  shape  of  what  for  distinct- 
ness is  called  thought.  In  whatever  form  this  theory  has 
been  stated  by  its  most  distinguished  professors,  it  leaves 
only  an  interval  of  degree,  and  not  an  interval  of  kind, 
between  the  mind  of  man  and  that  which,  in  some  of 
the  other  animals,  is  supposed  to  be  mind.  The  evolution 
doctrine,  taken  in  one  of  its  aspects,  supposes  one  grand 
chain  of  animal  organisms,  rising  higher  and  higher  in  the 
scale  of  animal  life,  but  connected  together  by  ordinary 
generation,  so  that  they  are  of  one  kindred  throughout ; 
but  that,  as  each  distinct  species  grows  out  of  predecessors, 
by  gradual  improvements  and  increments,  forming  more 
and  more  elaborate  organisms,  man  is  the  consummate 
product  of  the  whole  process.  But  when  we  ask  at  what 
point  or  stage  in  the  series  of  developing  animal  organisms 
the  mind  of  man  was  produced,  or  what  it  was  when  pro- 
duced, we  get  no  satisfactory  answer.  To  the  first  ques- 
tion, it  can  only  be  answered,  as  Darwin  himself  answers, 
that  there  must  be  a  definition  of  man  before  we  can  deter- 
mine at  what  time  he  came  to  exist.  To  the  second  ques- 
tion, we  have  answers  which  differ  materially  from  each 
other.  First,  we  have  whatever  we  can  extract  from  such 
a  system  of  psychology  as  Mr.  Spencer's,  which  ignores  the 
capability  of  the  mind  to  exist  independent  of  the  nervous 
structure  and  the  brain,  because  it  excludes  the  idea  of  any 
ego,  any  me,  any  person,  and  makes  consciousness  to  con- 
sist of  a  connected  series  of  physical  feelings,  to  which 
there  are  corresponding  psychical  equivalents  that  he  calls 


WHAT  DID  GOD  CREATE?  543 

mental  states.  It  would  seem  to  follow,  therefore,  that 
when,  there  is  no  longer  remaining  for  the  individual  any 
neryous  structure  and  any  brain,  the  mental  states,  or  psy- 
chical side  of  the  physical  impressions,  must  cease  ;  or,  in 
other  words,  that  the  only  existing  ego  has  come  to  an  end. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  have  seen  an  ingenious  hypothe- 
sis which  it  is  well  to  refer  to,  because  it  illustrates  the 
efforts  that  are  often  made  to  reconcile  the  doctrines  of 
evolution  with  a  belief  in  immortality.  This  h3rpothesis  by 
no  means  ignores  the  possibility  of  a  spiritual  existence,  or 
the  spiritual  as  distinguished  from  the  material  world. 
But  it  assumes  that  man  was  produced  under  the  operation 
of  physical  laws ;  and  that  after  he  had  become  a  completed 
product — the  consummate  and  finished  end  of  the  whole 
process  of  evolution — he  passed  under  the  dominion  and 
operation  of  other  and  different  laws,  and  is  saved  from 
annihilation  by  the  intervention  of  a  change  from  the  phys- 
ical to  the  spiritual  laws  of  his  Creator.  Put  into  a  con- 
densed form,  this  theory  has  been  thus  stated  :  Having 
spent  countless  aeons  in  forming  man,  by  the  slow  process  of 
animal  evolution,  Grod  will  not  suffer  him  to  fall  back  into 
elemental  flames,  and  be  consumed  by  the  further  opera- 
tion of  physical  laws,  but  will  transfer  him  into  the  domin- 
ion of  the  spiritual  laws  that  are  held  in  reserve  for  his 
salvation. 

One  of  the  first  questions  to  be  asked,  in  reference  to 
this  hypothesis,  is,  "Who  or  what  is  it  that  God  is  supposed 
to  have  spent  countless  aeons  in  creating  by  the  slow  process 
of  animal  evolution  ?  If  we  contemplate  a  single  specimen 
of  the  human  race,  we  find  a  bodily  organism,  endowed 
with  life  like  that  of  other  animals,  and  acted  upon  by 
physical  laws  throughout  the  whole  period  of  its  existence. 
We  also  find  present  in  the  same  individual  a  mental  exist- 
ence, which  is  certified  to  us  by  evidence  entirely  different 
from  that  by  which  we  obtain  a  knowledge  of  the  physical 


54:4  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

organism.  As  the  methods  employed  by  the  Creator  in  the 
production  of  the  physical  organism,  whatever  we  may  sup- 
pose them  to  have  been,  were  physical  laws  operating  upon 
matter,  so  the  methods  employed  by  him  in  the  production 
of  a  spiritual  existence  must  have  operated  in  a  domain 
that  was  wholly  aside  from  the  physical  world.  Each  of 
these  distinct  realms  is  equally  under  the  government  of  an 
Omnipotent  Being  ;  and  while  we  may  suppose  that  in  the 
one  he  employed  a  very  slow  process,  such  as  the  evolution 
of  animal  organisms  out  of  one  another  is  imagined  to  have 
been,  there  is  no  conceivable  reason  why  he  should  not,  in 
the  other  and  very  different  realm,  have  resorted  to  the 
direct  creation  of  a  spiritual  existence,  which  can  not,  in 
the  nature  of  things,  have  required  to  be  produced  by  the 
action  of  physical  laws.  "When,  at  the  birth  of  each  indi- 
vidual of  the  human  race,  the  two  existences  become 
united,  when,  in  consequence  of  the  operation  of  that 
sexual  union  of  the  parents  which  has  been  ordained  for 
the  production  of  a  new  individual,  the  physical  and  the 
spiritual  existence  become  incorporated  in  the  one  being, 
the  fact  that  they  remain  for  a  certain  time  mutually  de- 
pendent and  mutually  useful,  co-operating  in  the  purposes 
of  their  temporary  connection,  does  not  change  their  essen- 
tial nature.  The  one  may  be  destructible  because  the  opera- 
tion of  physical  laws  may  dissolve  the  ligaments  that  hold 
it  together  ;  the  other  may  be  indestructible,  because  the 
operation  of  spiritual  laws  will  hold  together  the  spiritual 
organism  that  is  in  its  nature  independent  of  the  laws  of 
matter. 

I  can  therefore  see  no  necessary  connection  between  the 
methods  employed  by  the  Almighty  in  the  production  of 
an  animal  and  the  methods  employed  by  him  in  the  pro- 
duction of  a  soul.  That  in  the  birth  of  the  individual  the 
two  come  into  existence  simultaneously,  and  are  tempora- 
rily united  in  one  and  the  same  being,  only  proves  that  the 


WANT  OF  THE  PRESENT  AGE.  545 

two  existences  are  contemporaneous  in  their  joint  incep- 
tion. It  does  not  prove  that  they  are  of  the  same  nature,  or 
the  same  substance,  or  that  the  physical  organism  is  the 
only  ego,  or  that  the  psychical  existence  is  nothing  but 
certain  states  of  the  material  structure,  to  whose  aggregate 
manifestations  certain  philosophers  give  the  name  of  mind, 
while  denying  to  them  personal  individuality  and  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  distinct  being. 

And  now,  in  bringing  this  discussion  to  a  close,  I  will 
only  add  that  the  great  want  of  this  age  is  the  prosecution 
of  inquiry  into  the  nature  of  the  human  mind  as  an  organic 
structure,  regarded  as  such.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  whole 
mission  of  Science  is  now  perverted  by  a  wrong  aim,  which 
is  to  find  out  the  external  to  the  neglect  of  the  internal — to 
make  all  exploration  terminate  in  the  laws  of  the  physical 
universe,  and  go  aside  from  the  examination  of  the  spiritual 
world.  It  is  no  reproach  to  those  who  essay  the  latter  in- 
quiry that  they  are  scoffed  at  as  "the  metaphysicians."  It 
matters  not  what  they  are  called,  so  long  as  they  pursue  the 
right  path.  It  is  now  in  regard  to  the  pursuit  of  science  as 
it  was  formerly  in  regard  to  the  writing  of  history.  That 
philosophical  French  historian,  M.  Taine,  has  luminously 
marked  the  change  which  has  come  over  the  methods  and 
objects  of  historical  studies  in  the  following  passage  : 

"When  you  consider  with  your  eyes  the  visible  man, 
what  do  you  look  for  ?  The  man  invisible.  The  words  which 
salute  your  ears,  the  gestures,  the  motions  of  his  head,  the 
clothes  he  wears,  visible  acts  and  deeds  of  every  kind,  are  ex- 
pressions merely  ;  somewhat  is  revealed  beneath  them,  and 
that  is  a  soul — an  inner  man  is  concealed  beneath  the  outer 
man  ;  the  second  does  not  reveal  the  first ;  ...  all  the 
externals  are  but  avenues  converging  toward  a  center  ;  you 
enter  them  simply  to  reach  that  center,  and  that  center  is 
the  genuine  man — I  mean  that  mass  of  faculties  and  feel- 
ings which  are  the  inner  man.     We  have  reached  a  new 


546  OEEATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

world,  which  is  infinite,  because  eyery  action  which  we  see 
inyolves  an  infinite  association  of  reasonings,  emotions,  sen- 
sations new  and  old,  which  have  served  to  bring  it  to  light, 
and  which,  like  great  rocks  deep-seated  in  the  ground,  find 
in  it  their  end  and  their  level.  This  under-world  is  a  new 
subject-matter  proper  to  the  historian.  .  .  .  This  precise 
and  proved  interpretation  of  past  sensations  has  given  to 
history,  in  our  days,  a  second  birth ;  hardly  anything  of 
the  sort  was  known  to  the  preceding  century.  They  thought 
men  of  every  race  and  country  were  all  but  identical— the 
Greek,  the  barbarian,  the  Hindoo,  the  man  of  the  Renais- 
sance, and  the  man  of  the  eighteenth  century — as  if  they 
had  all  been  turned  out  of  a  common  mold,  and  all  in 
conformity  to  a  certain  abstract  conception  which  served 
for  the  whole  human  race.  They  knew  man,  but  not  men  ; 
they  had  not  penetrated  to  the  soul ;  they  had  not  seen  the 
infinite  diversity  and  complexity  of  souls ;  they  did  not 
know  that  the  moral  constitution  of  a  people  or  an  age  is 
as  particular  and  distinct  as  the  physical  structure  of  a 
family  of  plants  or  an  order  of  animals."  * 

In  the  same  way  psychology  needs  a  new  birth,  like  the 
new  birth  of  history.  If  we  would  know  the  mind,  we 
must  reach  the  conviction  that  there  is  a  mind  :  and  this  con- 
viction can  be  reached  only  by  penetrating  through  all  the 
externals,  through  the  physical  organism,  through  the 
diversities  of  race,  through  the  environment  of  matter, 
until  we  have  found  the  soul.  If  history,  like  zoology, 
has  found  its  anatomy,  mental  science  must,  in  like  man- 
ner, be  prosecuted  as  an  anatomical  study.  So  long  as  we 
allow  the  anatomy  of  zoology  to  be  the  predominant  and 
only  explanation,  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  the  mental 
manifestations,  so  long  we  shall  fail  to  comprehend  the 
nature  of  man,  and  to  see  the  reason  for  his  immortality. 

*  Introduction  to  Taine's  "  History  of  English  Literature,"  translated 
by  H.  Van  Laun.    New  York:  Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  1885. 


GLOSSAET 

OP 

SCIENTIFIC  AND  TECHNICAL  TERMS  USED  IN  THIS  WORK. 


[Thk  following  definitions  marked  with  an  asterisk  are  borrowed  from  the 
glossary  annexed  to  Darwin's  "  Origin  of  Species."  The  remainder  of  the 
definitions  are  taken  from  Webster's  Dictionary.] 

*Aberrant.  Forms  or  groups  of  animals  or  plants  which  deviate  in 
important  characters  from  their  nearest  allies,  so  as  not  to  be 
easily  included  in  the  same  group  with  them,  are  said  to  be 
aberrant. 

*Abiionnal.     Contrary  to  the  general  rule. 

*Aborted.  An  organ  is  said  to  be  aborted  when  its  development  has 
been  arrested  at  a  very  early  stage. 

Aerate  (Zool.).  To  subject  to  the  influence  of  the  air  by  the  natural 
organs  of  respiration ;  to  arterialize ;  especially  used  of  animals 
not  having  lungs. 

Agnostic  (a.).  Professing  ignorance ;  involving  no  dogmatic  asser- 
tion ;  leaving  a  question  or  problem  still  in  doubt ;  pertaining  to 
or  involving  agnosticism. 

Agnostic  (n.).  One  who  professes  ignorance,  or  refrains  from  dog- 
matic assertion ;  one  who  supports  agnosticism,  neither  affirming 
nor  denying  the  existence  of  a  personal  Deity. 

Agnosticism.  That  doctrine  which,  professing  ignorance,  neither 
asserts  nor  denies ;  specifically,  in  theology,  the  doctrine  that  the 
existence  of  a  personal  Deity  can  be  neither  asserted  nor  denied, 
neither  proved  nor  disproved,  because  of  the  necessary  limits  of 
the  human  mind  (as  sometimes  charged  upon  Hamilton  and  Man- 
sel),  or  because  of  the  insufficiency  of  the  evidence  furnished  by 
psychical  and  physical  data,  to  warrant  a  positive  conclusion  (as 
taught  by  the  school  of  Herbert  Spencer) ;  opposed  alike  to  dog- 
matic skepticism  and  to  dogmatic  theism. 


54:8  CREATION"  OR  EVOLUTION? 

Allantois,  Allantoid.  A  thin  membrane,  situated  between  the 
chorion  and  amnion,  and  forming  one  of  the  membranes  which  in- 
vest the  foetus. 

*  Analogy.  That  resemblance  of  structures  which  depends  upon 
similarity  of  function,  as  in  the  wings  of  insects  and  birds.  Such 
structures  are  said  to  be  analogous,  and  to  be  analogues  of  each 
other. 

Anthropomorphism.  The  representation  of  the  Deity  under  a 
human  form,  or  with  human  attributes. 

*Articiilata.  A  great  division  of  the  animal  kingdom,  characterized 
generally  by  having  the  surface  of  the  body  divided  into  rings, 
called  segments,  a  greater  or  less  number  of  which  are  furnished 
with  jointed  legs  (such  as  insects,  crustaceans,  and  centipeds). 

Articulation  (Anat.).  The  joining  or  juncture  of  the  bones  of  a 
skeleton. 

Ascidians.  A  class  of  acephalous  moUusks,  having  often  a  leathery 
exterior. 

Biology.  The  science  of  life ;  that  part  of  physiology  which  treats 
of  life  in  general,  or  of  the  different  forces  of  life. 

Brain.  The  upper  part  of  the  head.  1.  (Anat.)  The  whitish,  soft 
mass  which  constitutes  the  anterior  or  cephalic  extremity  of  the 
nervous,  system  in  man  and  other  verebrates,  occupying  the  upper 
cavity  of  the  skull ;  and  (b)  the  anterior  or  cephalic  ganglion  in 
insects  and  other  invertebrates. 

2.  The  organ  or  seat  of  intellect ;  hence,  the  understanding. 

3.  The  affections ;  fancy ;  imagination. 
*Branchise.     Gills,  or  organs  for  respiration  in  water. 
*Branchial.     Pertaining  to  gills  or  branchias. 

*Canidse.     The  dog  family,  including  the  dog,  wolf,  fox,  jackal,  etc. 

Cell.  A  minute,  inclosed  space  or  sac,  filled  with  fluid,  making  up 
the  cellular  tissue  of  plants,  and  of  many  parts  of  animals,  and 
originating  the  parts  by  their  growth  and  reproduction ;  the  con- 
stituent element  of  all  plants  and  animals  (though  not  univers&l 
for  all  parts  of  such  structure),  much  as  a  crystalline  molecule  is 
the  element  of  a  crystal.  In  the  simplest  plants  and  animals  (as 
the  infusoria),  one  single  cell  constitutes  the  complete  individual, 
such  species  being  called  unicellular  plants  or  animals. 

Cephalopod  (Fr.  cephalopode,  from  Gr.,  head  and  foot).  (Zool.)  An 
animal  of  the  sub-kingdom  Mollusca,  characterized  by  a  distinct 
head,  surrounded  by  a  circle  of  long  arms  or  tentacles,  which  they 
use  for  crawling  and  for  seizing  objects.    See  Mollusk. 


GLOSSARY.  549 

*Cetacea.  An  order  of  Mammalia,  including  the  whales,  dolphins, 
etc.,  having  the  form  of  the  body  fish-like,  the  skin  naked,  and 
only  the  fore-limbs  developed. 

Chaos.     1.  An  empty,  infinite  space ;  a  yawning  chasm. 

2.  The  rude,  confused  state,  or  unorganized  condition,  of  matter 
before  the  creation  of  the  universe. 

Consciousness.  1.  The  knowledge  of  sensations  and  mental  opera- 
tions, or  of  what  passes  in  one's  own  mind ;  the  act  of  the  mind 
which  makes  known  an  internal  object. 

2.  Immediate  knowledge  of  any  object  whatever. 

*Crustaceans.  A  class  of  articulated  animals  having  the  skin  of  the 
body  generally  more  or  less  hardened  by  the  deposition  of  cal- 
careous matter,  breathing  by  means  of  gills.  {Examples^  crab, 
lobster,  shrimp,  etc.) 

Dynamically.  In  accordance  with  the  principles  of  dynamics  or 
moving  forces. 

*Embryo.  The  young  animal  undergoing  development  within  the 
Ggg  or  womb. 

*Enibryology.     The  study  of  the  development  of  the  embryo. 

Ethics.  The  science  of  human  duty;  the  body  of  rules  of  duty 
drawn  from  this  science;  a  particular  system  of  principles  and 
rules  concerning  duty,  whether  true  or  false ;  rules  of  practice  in 
respect  to  a  single  class  of  human  actions ;  as  political  or  social 
ethics. 

*Faiina.  The  totality  of  the  animals  naturally  inhabiting  a  certain 
country  or  region,  or  which  have  lived  during  a  given  geological 
period. 

Fetichism,  Feticism.  One  of  the  lowest  and  grossest  forms  of 
superstition,  consisting  in  the  worship  of  some  material  object,  as 
a  stone,  a  tree,  or  an  animal,  often  casually  selected;  practiced 
among  tribes  of  lowest  mental  endowment,  as  certain  races  of 
negroes. 

*Flora.  The  totality  of  the  plants  growing  naturally  in  a  country 
or  during  a  given  geological  period. 

*FoetaL  Of  or  belonging  to  the  foetus,  or  embryo  in  course  of  devel- 
opment. 

Foetus,  same  as  Fetus.  The  young  of  viviparous  animals  in  the 
womb,  and  of  oviparous  animals  in  the  egg,  after  it  is  perfectly 
formed,  before  which  time  it  is  called  embryo. 

*Ganoid  Fishes.  Fishes  covered  with  peculiar  enameled  bony  scales. 
Most  of  them  are  extinct. 


550  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

Genus  (Science).  An  assemblage  of  species  possessing  certain  char- 
acters in  common,  by  which  they  are  distinguished  from  all  others. 
It  is  subordinate  to  tribe  and  sub-tribe  ;  hence,  a  single  species  hav- 
ing distinctive  characters  that  seem  of  more  than  specific  value 
may  constitute  a  genus. 

*Genniiial  Vesicle.  A  minute  vesicle  in  the  eggs  of  animals,  from 
which  the  development  of  the  embryo  proceeds. 

Gravitation  (Physics).  That  species  of  attraction  or  force  by  which 
all  bodies  or  particles  of  matter  in  the  universe  tend  toward  each 
other ;  called  also  attraction  of  gravitation,  universal  gravitation, 
and  universal  gravity. 

Gravity  (Physics).  The  tendency  of  a  mass  of  matter  toward  a  cen- 
ter of  attraction;  especially  the  tendency  of  a  body  toward  the 
center  of  the  earth,  terrestrial  gravitation. 

Gyrus,  pi.  Gyri  (Anat.),    A  convolution  of  the  brain. 

*Habitat.     The  locality  in  which  a  plant  or  animal  naturally  lives. 

Heredity.  The  transmission  of  the  physical  and  psychical  qualities 
of  parents  to  their  offspring ;  the  biological  law  by  which  living 
beings  tend  to  repeat  themselves  in  their  descendants. 

Homologous.  Having  the  same  relative  proportion,  position,  value, 
or  structure ;  especially — {a)  (Geom.)  Corresponding  in  relative  posi- 
tion and  proportion,  (b)  (Alg.)  Having  the  same  relative  propor- 
tion or  value,  as  the  two  antecedents  or  the  two  consequents  of  a 
proportion,  (c)  (Chem.)  Being  of  the  same  chemical  type  or  series ; 
differing  by  a  multiple  or  arithmetical  ratio  in  certain  constituents, 
while  the  physical  qualities  are  wholly  analogous,  with  small  rela- 
tive differences,  as  if  corresponding  to  a  series  of  parallels ;  as,  the 
species  in  the  group  of  alcohols  are  said  to  be  homologous,  (d) 
(Zool.)  Being  of  the  same  typical  structure ;  having  like  relations 
to  a  fundamental  type  of  structure ;  as,  those  bones  in  the  hand  of 
man  and  the  fore-foot  of  a  horse  are  homologous  that  correspond  in 
their  structural  relations — that  is,  in  their  relations  to  the  type- 
structure  of  the  fore-limb  in  vertebrates. 

Homology.  That  relation  between  parts  which  results  from  their 
development  from  corresponding  embryonic  parts,  either  in  differ- 
ent animals,  as  in  the  case  of  the  arm  of  a  man,  the  fore-leg  of  a 
quadruped,  and  the  wing  of  a  bird ;  or  in  the  same  individual,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  fore  and  hind  legs  in  quadrupeds,  and  the  seg- 
ments or  rings  and  their  appendages  of  which  the  body  of  a  worm, 
a  centiped,  etc.,  is  composed.  The  latter  is  called  serial  homology. 
The  parts  which  stand  in  such  a  relation  to  each  other  are  said  to 


GLOSSARY.  551 

be  homologous,  and  one  such  part  or  organ  is  called  the  homologtce 
of  the  other.  In  different  plants  the  parts  of  the  flower  are  homol- 
ogous, and  in  general  these  parts  are  regarded  as  homologous  with 
leaves. 

Hypothesis.  1.  A  supposition ;  a  proposition  or  principle  which  is 
supposed  or  taken  for  granted,  in  order  to  draw  a  conclusion  or  in- 
ference for  proof  of  the  point  in  question ;  something  not  proved, 
but  assumed  for  the  purpose  of  argument. 

2.  A  system  or  theory  imagined  or  assumed  to  account  for 
known  facts  or  phenomena. 

Imago.     The  perfect  (generally  winged)  reproductive  state  of  an  insect. 

Implacenta  (n.).  A  mammal  having  no  placenta,  (a.)  Without  a 
placenta,  as  certain  marsupial  animals. 

Insectivorous.     Feeding  on  insects. 

Instinct  (n.).  Inward  impulse ;  unconscious,  involuntary,  or  unreason- 
ing prompting  to  action ;  a  disposition  to  any  mode  of  action, 
whether  bodily  or  spiritual,  without  a  distinct  apprehension  of  the 
end  or  object  which  Nature  has  designed  should  be  accomplished 
thereby ;  specifically,  the  natural,  unreasoning  impulse  in  an  ani- 
mal, by  which  it  is  guided  to  the  performance  of  any  action,  with- 
out thought  of  improvement  in  the  method. 

Invertebrata,  or  Invertebrate  Animals.  Those  animals  which 
do  not  possess  a  backbone  or  spinal  column. 

Isomeric  (from  Gr.,  equal  and  part).  (Chem.)  Having  the  quality 
of  isomerism ;  as  isomeric  compounds. 

Isomerism  (Chem.).  An  identity  of  elements  and  of  atomic  propor- 
tions with  a  difference  in  the  amount  combined  in  the  compound 
molecule,  and  of  its  essential  qualities;  as  in  the  case  of  the 
physically  unlike  compounds  of  carbon  and  hydrogen,  consisting 
one  of  one  part  of  each,  another  of  two  parts  of  each,  and  a  thu-d 
of  four  of  each. 

Kangaroo.  A  ruminating  marsupial  animal  of  the  genus  Macropus, 
found  in  Australia  and  the  neighboring  islands. 

Larva  (plural  Larvae).  The  first  condition  of  an  insect  at  its  issuing 
from  the  egg,  when  it  is  usually  in  the  form  of  a  grub,  caterpillar, 
or  maggot. 

Lemuridse.  A  group  of  four-handed  animals,  distinct  from  the 
monkeys,  and  approaching  the  insectivorous  quadrupeds  in  some 
of  their  characters  and  habits.  Its  members  have  the  nostrils 
curved  or  twisted,  and  a  claw  instead  of  a  nail  upon  the  first  finger 
of  the  hind  hands. 


552  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

Lepidosiren.  An  eel-shaped  animal  covered  with  rounded  scales, 
having  four  rod-like  members,  and  breathing  water  like  a  fish.  It 
is  found  in  ponds  and  rivers  of  intertropical  Africa  and  South 
America.  By  some  it  is  regarded  as  a  fish,  and  by  others  as  a  ba- 
trachian. 

Mammal.  Belonging  to  the  breast;  from  mamma,  the  breast  or 
pap.  An  animal  of  the  highest  class  of  vertebrates,  characterized 
by  the  female  suckling  its  young. 

Mam.m.alia.  The  highest  class  of  animals,  including  the  ordinary 
hairy  quadrupeds,  the  whales,  and  man,  and  characterized  by  the 
production  of  living  young,  which  are  nourished  after  birth  by 
milk  from  the  teats  (mammce,  mammary  glands)  of  the  mother.  A 
striking  difference  in  embryonic  development  has  led  to  the  divis- 
ion of  this  class  into  two  great  groups :  in  one  of  these,  when  the 
embryo  has  attained  a  certain  stage,  a  vascular  connection,  called 
the  placenta,  is  formed  between  the  embryo  and  the  mother ;  in 
the  other  this  is  wanting,  and  the  young  are  produced  in  a  very 
incomplete  state.  The  former,  including  the  greater  part  of  the 
class,  are  called  placental  mammals  ;  the  latter,  or  aplacental  mam- 
mals, include  the  marsupials  and  monotremes  {ornithorJiynchus). 

Marsupials.  An  order  of  Mammalia  in  which  the  young  are  born 
in  a  very  incomplete  state  of  development,  and  carried  by  the 
mother,  while  sucking,  in  a  ventral  pouch  {marsupium),  such  as  the 
kangaroos,  opossums,  etc.  (see  Mammalia). 

Molecule.  A  mass ;  one  of  the  invisible  particles  supposed  to  con- 
stitute matter  of  any  kind. 

MoUusk.  An  invertebrate  animal,  having  a  soft,  fleshy  body 
(whence  the  name),  which  is  inarticulate,  and  not  radiate  inter- 
nally. 

Monkey.     See  Simia. 

Monogamy.  A  marriage  to  one  wife  only,  or  the  state  of  such  as  are 
restricted  to  a  single  wife,  or  may  not  marry  again  after  the  death 
of  a  first  wife. 

Monotheism.     The  doctrine  or  belief  that  there  is  but  one  God. 

Morphology.     The  law  of  form  or  structure  independent  of  function. 

Nascent.     Commencing  development. 

Nexus.     Connection;  tie. 

Nictitating  Membrane.  A  semi-transparent  membrane,  which  can 
be  drawn  across  the  eye  in  birds  and  reptiles,  either  to  moderate 
the  effects  of  a  strong  light  or  to  sweep  particles  of  dust,  etc.,  from 
the  surface  of  the  eye. 


GLOSSARY.  553 

Noumenon  (Metaph.).  The  of  itself  unknown  and  unknowable  ra- 
tional object,  or  thing  in  itself,  which  is  distinguished  from  the 
phenomenon  in  which  it  occurs  to  apprehension,  and  by  which  it  is 
interpreted  and  understood ;  so  used  in  the  philosophy  of  Kant  and 
his  followers. 

Opossum.  An  animal  of  several  species  of  marsupial  quadrupeds  of 
the  genus  Didelphys,  The  common  species  of  the  United  States  is 
the  D.  Virginiana.  Another  species,  common  in  Texas  and  Cali- 
fornia, is  D.  Califomica,  and  other  species  are  found  in  South 
America. 

Organism.     An  organized  being,  whether  plant  or  animal. 

Ovule.  An  egg.  (Bot.)  The  rudimentary  state  of  a  seed.  It  con- 
sists essentially  of  a  nucleus  developed  directly  from  the  placenta. 

Parasite.  An  animal  or  plant  living  upon  or  in,  and  at  the  expense 
of,  another  organism. 

Pelvis.  The  bony  arch  to  which  the  hind-limbs  of  vertebrate  ani- 
mals are  articulated. 

Placentalia,  Placentata,  or  Placental  Mammals.  See  Mam- 
malia. 

Protozoa.  The  lowest  great  division  of  the  Animal  Kingdom. 
These  animals  are  composed  of  a  gelatinous  material,  and  show 
scarcely  any  trace  of  distinct  organs.  The  infusoria,  foraminifera, 
and  sponges,  with  some  other  forms,  belong  to  this  division. 

Phenomenon.  1.  An  appearance ;  anything  visible ;  whatever  is 
presented  to  the  eye ;  whatever,  in  matter  or  spirit,  is  apparent  to, 
or  is  apprehended  by,  observation,  as  distinguished  from  its  ground, 
substance,  or  unknown  constitution ;  as  phenomena  of  heat  or  elec- 
tricity ;  phenomena  of  imagination  or  memory. 

2.  Sometimes  a  remarkable  or  unusual  appearance  whose  cause 
is  not  immediately  obvious. 

Plexus.     Any  net-work  of  vessels,  nerves,  or  fibers. 

Polygamy.  A  plurality  of  wives  or  husbands  at  the  same  time,  or 
the  having  of  such  plurality ;  usually  the  condition  of  a  man  having 
more  than  one  wife. 

Polytheism.  The  doctrine  of  a  plurality  of  gods  or  invisible  beings 
superior  to  man,  and  having  an  agency  in  the  government  of  the 
world. 

Proteine  (n.  Lat.,  proteinum,  from  Gr.,  first — to  be  the  first — the 
first  place,  chief  rank,  because  it  occupies  the  first  place  in  relation 
to  the  albuminous  principles).  (Chem.)  A  substance  claimed  by 
Mulder  to  be  obtained  as  a  distinct  substance  from  albumen, 


554:  CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 

fibrine,  or  caseine,  and  considered  by  him  to  be  the  basis  of  animal 
tissue  and  of  some  substances  of  vegetable  origin. 

The  theory  of  proteine  can  not  be  maintained. — Gregory. 
The  theory  of  Mulder  is  doubted  and  denied  by  many  chemists, 
and  also  the  existence  of  proteine  as  a  distinct  substance. 

Psycliology.  A  discourse  or  treatise  on  the  human  soul;  the  sci- 
ence of  the  human  soul;  specifically,  the  systematic  or  scientific 
knowledge  of  the  powers  and  functions  of  the  human  soul,  so  far 
as  they  are  known  by  consciousness. 

Quadnimane.  An  animal  having  four  feet  that  correspond  to  the 
hands  of  a  man,  as  a  monkey. 

Race.     1.  The  descendants  of  a  common  ancestor;  a  family,  tribe, 
people,  or  nation,  believed  or  presumed  to  belong  to  the  same  stock ; 
a  lineage ;  a  breed. 
2.  A  root. 

Retina.  The  delicate  inner  coat  of  the  eye,  formed  by  nervous  fila- 
ments spreading  from  the  optic  nerve,  and  serving  for  the  percep- 
tion of  the  impressions  produced  by  light. 

Rotifer  {n.  Lat.  rotifer^  from  Lat.  rota,  a  wheel,  and  ferro,  to  bear. 
Fr.  rotifere).  (Zool.)  One  of  a  group  of  microscopic  crustaceans, 
having  no  limbs,  and  moving  by  means  of  rows  of  cilia  about  the 
head  or  the  anterior  extremity. 

Rudiment  (Nat.  Hist.).  An  imperfect  organ,  or  one  which  is  never 
fully  formed. 

Sacral.  Belonging  to  the  sacrum,  or  the  bone  composed  usually  of 
two  or  more  united  vertebrae  to  which  the  sides  of  the  pelvis  in 
vertebrate  animals  are  attached. 

Sacrum.  The  bone  which  forms  the  posterior  part  of  the  pelvis.  It 
is  triangular  in  form. 

Secularize.  To  convert  from  spiritual  to  secular  or  common  use ; 
as  to  secularize  a  church,  or  church  property. 

Segments.  The  transverse  rings  of  which  the  body  of  an  articulate 
animal  or  annelid  is  composed. 

Simla  (plural  Simiadae)  (Lat.,  an  ape,  from  simus,  flat-nosed,  snub- 
nosed).  (Zool.)  A  Linnaean  genus  of  animals,  including  the  ape, 
monkey,  and  the  like;  a  general  name  of  the  various  tribes  of 
monkeys. 

Species  (Nat.  Hist.).  A  permanent  class  of  existing  things  or  beings, 
associated  according  to  attributes  or  properties  which  are  deter- 
mined by  scientific  observation. 

Spinal  Cord.    The  central  portion  of  the  nervous  system  in  the  ver- 


GLOSSARY.  555 

tebrata,  which  descends  from  the  brain  through  the  arches  of  the 
vertebrse,  and  gives  off  nearly  all  the  nerves  to  the  various  organs 
of  the  body. 

Statical.  To  stand.  1.  Pertaining  to  bodies  at  rest,  or  in  equilib- 
rium. 

2.  Resting ;  acting  by  mere  weight  without  motion ;  as  statical 
pressure. 

Sulcus.     A  fissure  of  the  brain,  separating  two  convolutions,  or  gyri. 

Teleology  (Fr.,  teleologie,  from  Gr.,  the  end  or  issue,  and  discourse). 
The  science  or  doctrine  of  the  final  causes  of  things ;  the  philo- 
sophical consideration  of  final  causes  in  general. 

Variety  (Nat.  Hist.,  Bot,,  and  ZooL).  Any  form  or  condition  of 
structure  under  a  species  which  differs  in  its  cliaracteristics  from 
those  typical  to  the  species,  as  in  color,  shape,  size,  and  the  like, 
and  which  is  capable  either  of  perpetuating  itself  for  a  period, 
or  of  being  perpetuated  by  artificial  means ;  also,  any  of  the  vari- 
ous forms  under  a  species  meetiag  the  conditions  mentioned. 
A  form  characterized  by  an  abnormity  of  structure,  or  any  differ- 
ence from  the  type  that  is  not  capable  of  being  perpetuated 
through  two  or  more  generations,  is  not  called  a  variety. 

Vascular.     Containing  blood-vessels. 

Vertebrata ;  or  Vertebrate  Animals.  The  highest  division  of  the 
animal  kingdom,  so  called  from  the  presence  in  most  cases  of  a 
back-bone  composed  of  numerous  joints  or  vertebrce,  which  consti- 
tutes the  center  of  the  skeleton,  and  at  the  same  time  supports  and 
protects  the  central  parts  of  the  nervous  system. 

Vesicle.  A  bladder-like  vessel ;  a  membranous  cavity ;  a  cyst ;  a 
cell ;  especially  (a)  (Bot.)  a  small  bladder-like  body  in  the  substance 
of  a  vegetable,  or  upon  the  surface  of  a  leaf. — Grai/.  (b)  (Med.)  A 
small  orbicular  elevation  of  the  cuticle  containing  lymph,  and  suc- 
ceeded by  a  scurf  or  laminated  scab ;  also,  any  small  cavity  or  sac 
in  the  human  body ;  as  the  umbilical  vesicle. 

Vortices  {verto,  to  turn).  1.  A  whirling  or  circular  motion  of  any 
fluid,  usually  of  water,  forming  a  kind  of  cavity  in  the  center  of 
the  circle,  and  in  some  instances  drawing  in  water  or  absorbing 
other  things ;  a  whirlpool. 

2.  A  whirling  of  the  air ;  a  whirlwind. 

3.  (Cartesian  system.)  A  supposed  collection  of  particles  of 
very  subtile  matter,  endowed  with  a  rapid  rotary  motion  around 
an  axis.  By  means  of  these  vortices  Descartes  attempted  to  ac- 
count for  the  formation  of  the  universe. 

25 


INDEX. 


Advocacy,  maxim  of,  132. 

Affections,  structural  system  of,  532. 

Agnosticism,  as  defined  by  Huxley, 
274. 

Alantois,  the,  office  of,  236  etseq.^  245. 

Almagest.    See  Ptolemaic  System. 

Amphibians  in  the  Darwinian  pedi- 
gree of  man,  71,  96,  98. 

Amphioxus.     See  Lancelet. 

Amputation  before  or  after  birth, 
129,  130. 

Anatomy,  modem,  great  advance  of, 
40,  41. 
Plato's  knowledge  of,  38. 

Anatomy  of  the  mind,  470. 

Animals,  origin  of,  according  to 
Plato,  57  ^<  seq. 
origin  of,  according  to  Darwin,  60 
et  seq. 
\/  Anthropomorphic  attributes  not  ne- 
cessary to  the  conception  of  God, 
293  et  seq. 

Anthropomorphism,  meaning,  293. 

Antichthon,  or  counter-earth,  invented 
by  the  Pythagoreans,  36. 

Apes,  varieties  of,  71. 
anthropomorphous,  100. 

Apparitions,  facts  communicated  by, 
486^88. 

Aquatic  worm,  94. 

Areas,  effect  of  change  of,  248. 


Articulata,  likeness  of  structure  in, 

205  et  seq. 
Ascidians,  larv^ae  of,  94. 
Assassination,  once   employed   with 

impunity,  165. 
Associative  faculty,  what  it  is,  528. 
Athenian,  the,  compared  with  a  sav- 
age, 73,  74. 
Authority,  as  affecting  belief,  3. 
ecclesiastic  and  scientific,  22,  23. 
in  science,  21. 
Automatic  machines,  analysis  of,  506. 

Baboons,  how  different  from  monk- 
eys, 71,  note. 
Belief,  foundations  of,  1-3. 

antiquity  of,  how  to  be  regarded, 

132  etseq. 
grounds  of,  274-277. 
Birds,  origin  of,  according  to  Plato,  57. 

sexual  selection  among,  67,  note. 
Bishop,  P.  P.,  "The  Heart  of  Man," 

471,  note. 
Blood,  similarity  in  the  composition 
of,  122. 
great  change  in,  122. 
Body,  natural  and  spiritual,  468. 
Brain  of  men  and  apes  compared, 
191. 
human,  518. 
office  of,  196. 


558 


CREATION  OR  EVOLUTIO:Nr? 


Breaks   in  the  organic   chain,  103- 

106. 
Buffon,  accepted  Mosaic  account  of 
creation,  368,  869. 

Causation,  ultimate,  386. 

Cell,  hypothesis  of  the  single,  371, 

note. 
Chaos,  Plato's  conception  of,  45. 
Classification,  how  it  supports  evo- 
lution, 200,  203. 
Common  stock,   hypothesis   of    de- 
scent from,  209. 
Composition,  what   occurs  in,   4 "73, 

474. 
Comte,  Auguste,  one  of  bis  sugges- 
tions, 387,  388. 
Conduct,  Spencer's  view  of,  427  et 

seq. 
Consciousness,  what  it  is,  470,  471, 

503. 
Constitutions,     political,     supposed 

growth  of,  168. 
Conversations  invented  during  sleep, 

480,  481. 
Conversion  of  organs,  67. 
Copernicus,  system  of,  32. 
Creation,    special,    contrasted   with 
evolution,  1  et  seq. 
absolute,  unknown  to  the  Greeks, 

45. 
influence  of  the  belief  in,  164, 165. 
man's  power  of,  144. 
Mosaic  account  of,  23. 
poetical,  140,  141. 
what  it  is,  136  et  seq.,  139,  140, 
223. 
Creator,  the,  postulate  of,  115. 
honoring  or  dishonoring  the,  not 

the  question,  160  el  seq. 
method  of,  207. 


Creator,    methods   of,   in    the    two 
realms  of  spirit  and  matter,  537. 
power  of,  boundless,  224,  232,  535. 
Crosses  not  permissible  between  dis- 
tinct species,  372. 

Darwin,  Charles,  his  theory  of  evo- 
^    lution,  7. 

V  bearing  of  his  theory  on  man's 

immortality,  12,  13. 

V  candor  and  accuracy  of,  101. 

^  difference  of,  from   Spencer,  43, 
225. 
his  pedigree  of  man,  70-72,  87. 
his  view  of  human  dignity,  10. 
on  primeval  man,  375. 
V^on  the  belief  in  God,  60,  61. 
rejects  an  aboriginal  pair,  406. 
tabulated  form  of  his  pedigree  of 
man,  93. 
Dekad,  the  perfect  number  of  the 

Pythogoreans,  35. 
Delirium,  explanation  of,  499,  500. 
Demiurgus,  the,  constructor  of  Plato's 

Kosmos,  46, 
Descartes,  his  theory  of  vortices,  S3. 
Descent,  must  be  unbroken,  211. 
Design,  when  hypothesis  of,  neces- 
sary, 214. 
Desires,  mental  system  of,  532. 
Domestic  animals,  breeding  of,  89. 
Distribution  in  space,  how  it  affects 
evolution,  203,  247. 
in  time,  251. 
Dreams,  phenomena  of,  479-490. 

Earth.    See  Solar  System. 
Economy  of  Nature,  meaning  of,  116, 

126. 
Elements,  the  four,  in  the  Platonic 

Kosmos,  45,  46. 


INDEX. 


559 


V 


Eliphaz  and  Zopbar,     See  Job. 
Embryonic      development,      resem- 
blances in,  111,  120. 
Embyrology,  cautions  respecting,  241. 

how  it  supports  evolution,  229. 
Emotions,  system  of,  530-532. 
Energy.    See  Power,  Causation. 
Evidence,   rules    of    circumstantial, 
14-17. 
applicable  to  scientific   investiga- 
tion, 17,  18. 
missing  links  in  chain  of,  18-20. 
process  of,  67,  68. 
Evil,  rational  explanation  of,  148  et 

seq. 
Evolution,  assumptions  in  the  theory 
of,  18-20. 
general  reasons  for,  102. 
law  of,  limited,  210. 
of  man,  373. 
principle  of,  377. 
process  reversed,  252-256. 
Experts,  true  office  of,  21,  22. 
Extemporaneous   speaking,  what  is, 

474. 
Eye,  the,  formation  of,  68-70,  83,  84. 

Faunas  of  different  areas,  247. 
Fetichism.    See  Spencer. 
Fishes,  origin  of,  according  to  Plato, 
68. 

most  lowly  organized,  95. 

shell,  the  lowest  form  of,  58. 
Foetus,  growth  of  the,  234  et  seq. 

Galen,  mistakes  of,  in  anatomy,  39,40. 

how  he  differed  from  Plato,  39. 
Galileo,  confirms  and  rectifies  Kep- 
ler's laws,  32. 
/Papal  condemnation  of,   20,   21, 
V      note. 


Ganoids,  description  of,  96. 
Genealogical  trees   of  no  value  in 

zoology,  202,  note. 
General  laws  and  special  creations, 

.127,  128. 
Germ,  anti-fcetal,  how  formed,  234. 
Gladiatorial   shows,  part  of  Roman 
,       civilization,  164. 
God,  existence  of,  how  proved,  11, 12. 
a  necessary  postulate,  402. 
a    personal,   denied    by  Spencer, 

433. 
consciousness  of,  how  to  be  lost, 
according  to  Spencer,  285  et  seq. 
existence  and  attributes  of,  how 

deduced,  300  et  seq. 
his  dealing  with  Abraham,  425. 
probable  methods  of,  63,  64,  82- 

85,  102. 
unlike  Plato's  Demiurgus,  85. 
Gods,    the,    origin    of,   among    the 
Greeks,  50. 
genesis  of,  according  to  Plato,  46, 

48-50,  note. 
office    of,    in    the    formation    of 
Plato's  Kosmos,  49. 
Gravitation,  law   of,   how   deduced, 

20. 
Greek  philosophy,  account  of,  24  et 
seq. 
encounters  monotheism   at  Alex- 
andria, 287. 
how  hampered  by  the  mythology, 

138. 
schools  of,  before  Plato,  28. 
Grote,  his  Plato  cited  and  followed, 
27-40,  287,  288,  290. 

Harvey  discovers  the  circulation  of 

the  blood,  40. 
Heat,  origin  of,  386,  387. 


560 


CREATION  OR  EVOLUTION? 


,      Ilebrews  receive  divine  commands, 
'  418. 

Heredity,  law  of,  limited,  225. 
Homologous  organs,  meaning  of,  97. 
See  Swim-Bladder  and  Lung. 
meaning  of,  215,  note. 
Human  life,  peculiar  sacredness  of, 

164-166. 
Huxley,  Professor,  on  the  brain  of 

man  and  apes,  192. 
Huxley,  Professor,  quoted,  121. 

Ideal    persons,   are   creations,    140, 

141. 
Ideal  plan,  objection  to,  114,  118. 
Ideas  in  Plato's  system,  coeval  with 
primordial  matter,  45,  46. 
how  acquired,  506-508. 
Idiocy,  absolute,  probably  does  not 
exist,  526. 
what  it  is,  526-528; 
Idiot.    See  Idiocy. 
Immortality,  what  is  proof  of,  41, 
V  640. 

belief  in,  61,  62. 
fanciful  explanation  of,  543. 
Improvisation,  what  is,  474. 
Infinite  goodness  consistent  with  the 

existence  of  suffering,  156. 
Instinct,  genesis  of,  according  to  Pla- 
to, 60. 
genesis  of,  according  to  Darwin, 
ib. 
Intellectual  faculties,  system  of,  525. 
Interbreeding.    See  Species. 
Introspective  faculty,  power  of  the, 

529. 
Intuitive    faculty,    office     of,    525, 

626. 
Invention  in  mechanics,  475. 
Invention  is  creation,  142. 


Job  and  his  friends,  25  ef  seq. 

Kangaroos,  structure  of,  98. 

Kepler,  his  laws  of  the  planetary  mo- 
tions, 32. 

Knowledge  not  limited  to  scientific 
demonstration,  392. 
of  ourselves,  520,  521. 

Kosmos,  the.     See  Plato. 

Lancelet,  visual  organ  of  the,  68. 
Languages,  origin  of,  168,  397,  398. 
Lemuridae  in  the  Darwinian  pedigree 
of  man,  71. 
characteristics  of,  99. 
Logic,  abuse  of,  136  et  scq. 
right  use  of,  220. 
use  and  misuse  of  its  forms,  145. 
Lung  in  vertebrates,  supposed  homo- 
logue  with  a  swim-bladder,  67. 
conversion  of,  from  swim-bladder, 
97. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  his  depreciation  of 

natural  theology,  24  et  seq. 
Macbeth,    Lady,   her   sleep-walking 

analyzed,  491-499. 
Man,  dignity  of,  how  to  be  treated,  9, 
10. 
bodily  structure  of,  109. 
common  ancestor  of,  and  the  apes, 

71,  100. 
constructive  faculty  of,  346. 
immortality  of,  12,  13. 
liability  to  certain  diseases,  110. 
moral  accountabiUty  of,  9,  10. 
origin  of,  348. 
pedigree  of,  according  to  Darwin, 

70-72. 
rank  of,  in  scale  of  being,  101. 
Marriage,  scientific  view  of,  381. 


INDEX. 


561 


^, 


V 


Marsupials  in  the  Darwinian  pedigree 
of  man,  71. 
ancient,  98. 
Matter,  primordial,  according  to  Pla- 
to, 45. 
atter  and  spirit  contrasted,  477. 
Medium,  effect  of  change  of,  248, 

249. 
Mind,  origin  of,  8,  9. 

a  created  being,  407  et  seq. 
^       a  spiritual  creation,  401-404. 

V  contrasted  theories  of,  533  et  seq. 

V  evolution  origin  of  the,  538. 

\^  evolution  theory  of  origin  of,  394 
et  8cq. 
is  an  organism,  476. 
of  animals  below  man,  80,  81. 
origin  and  nature  of,  467-546. 
\  /  origin  of,  according  to  Darwin,  78. 
\  /  origin  of,  according  to  Plato,  79, 
80. 
structure  of,  502. 
substance  of,  509. 
systems  of,  623  et  xeq. 
the  human,  placed  under  certain 
laws,  389,  390. 
Miracles,  meaning  of,  129. 
Miraculous  interposition  not  neces- 
sary, 163. 
Modern  civilization,  what  it  owes  to 
belief  in  special  creation,  164- 
166. 
Monkeys,  two  great  stems  of,  71. 
catarrhine,  or  Old-World,  100. 
Monotheism,  its  influence  on  philoso- 
phy, 138. 
origin  of,  342. 
Monotremata,  division  of  the  mam- 
malian series,  98. 
Moral  injunctions,  sacred  origin  of, 
418. 


Moral  injunctions,  Spencer's  denial 
of,  427  et  seq.,  433. 

Moral  law,  capacity  of  human  beings 
to  receive,  420. 
scientific  view  of  the,  420  et  seq. 

Moral  purposes  in  the  phenomena  of 
nature,  387,  388. 

Moral  sense,  origin  of,  86. 

Morphology,  how  it  supports  evolu- 
tion, 202. 

Mosaic  account  of  creation,  ration- 
ality of,  366  et  seq. 

Murder,  punishment  of,  moral  foun- 
dation for,  166. 

"  Music  of  the  spheres,"  origin  of  the 
phrase,  37. 

Nascent  organs,  meaning  of ,  1 1 1 , 1 1 2. 

"Natural,"  meaning  of,  214. 

Natural  theology,  progress  of,  from 
Thales  to  Plato  and  Aristotle, 
28,  29.  * 

importance  of,  43. 

Nervous  organization,  Spencer's  view 
of,  409  et  seq. 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  discovers  the  law 
of  universal  gravitation,  33. 
deduces  a  personal  God  from  na- 
ture, 331,  note. 
his  general  scholium,  332. 

Noumcnon,  an  invented  word,  269. 

Number.  See  Dekad,  and  Pythago- 
ras. 

Opossums,  structure  of,  98. 

Orthodoxy,  Plato's  idea  of,  as  sug- 
gested in  his  "  Republic,"  296, 
297. 

Oviparous  animals,  98. 

Pairs,  of  animals,  opposite  views  of, 
405. 


562 


CREATION   OR  EVOLUTION? 


Pairs,  assumed  existence  of,  537. 
Parasites,  how  to  be  viewed,  151  et 

seq. 
Pattern  of  structure,  argument  con- 
cerning, 204. 
Pedigree,  rule  for  tracing,  185-1 87. 
Pedigree  of  man.  Darwinian,  70  et 

seq. 
Phenomcrnon  and  noumenon,  268. 
Philolaus  as  quoted  by  Grote,  35. 
Philosophy,  modem  and  ancient  com- 
pared, 24  et  seq. 
Physicians  in  Plato's  time,  40. 
Placental  mammals,  99. 
Plato,  period  of,  28,  note. 
as  given  in  "  Timaeus,"  298. 
his  Demiurgus,  287,  288. 
Ms  genealogy  of  the  gods,   298, 

note. 
his  Kosmos  and  Darwin's  hypothe- 
sis compared,  44-86. 
tlis  origin  of  religious  beliefs  as 

given  in  "  Republic,"  296. 
his  triplicity  of  souls,  39. 
his  view  of  rudiments,  74,  75. 
originality  of,  289,  290. 
Polytheism,  origin  of,  342. 
Power,  distinct  from  substance,  226, 
233,  note  ;  339  et  seq. 
an  attribute  of  mind,  386. 
of  nature,  limited,  343-345. 
Primitive    beliefs,    not    necessarily 

wrong,  132  c^  seq. 
*' Principle"   of    construction,    106, 

107. 
Probability,  force  of,  in  reasoning,  7. 
Psychology,  needs  a  new  birth,  546. 
Ptolemaic  system,  description  of,  31. 
Pyramids,   why  referable  to  mind, 

390,  391. 
Pythagoras,  school  of,  34  et  seq. 


Quadrumana,  in  the  Darwinian  pedi- 
gree of  man,  71. 
and  other  mammals,  99. 

Races,  what  are,  372. 
Raphael,  created  images,  143. 
Religion,  what  is,  11,  12. 
natural,  23. 

when  in  conflict  with  science,  1 1- 
13,  399. 
Religious    consciousness,    Spencer's 

origin  of,  284. 
Reproduction,  two  grand  systems  of, 

107,  108. 
Reproductive  process,  parallel  in  the, 

110. 
Reptiles,  Plato's  origin  of,  58. 
Resurrection,  St.  Paul's  doctrine  of 

the,  468. 
Revelation,  how  treated  in  this  work, 
23. 
purpose  of,  540. 
Roman  civilization,  lacked  belief  in 
creation,  164. 
law,  slavery  under,  165. 
Rudiments,  Plato's  view  of,  74,  75. 
instances  of,  111-114,  124,  125. 

Sacrum,  analysis  of  the  human,  215. 

structure  of  the  female,  220. 
Savages,  beliefs  of,  60,  61. 
Science,  domain  of,  391,  392. 
present  tendency  of,  352. 
tendencies  of,  127. 
values  of,  291. 
when    in    conflict  with    religion, 

meaning  of,  11,  12. 
wrong  aims  of,  545. 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,   his  reliance   on 
thoughts  obtained  during  sleep, 
490,  note. 


INDEX. 


563 


Secularization  of  morals  discussed, 

434  et  seq. 
Segments.     See  Articulata,  Verte- 
brates. 
Selection,  natural,  65,  72,  89. 
limitations  to,  91. 
office  of,  72. 
sexual,  66,  72,  89. 
Senses,  the  corporeal,  503. 
Sexes,  origin  of,  in  Plato's  Kosmos, 
55. 
in  Nature,  221,  354  et  seq.,  378. 
Sexual  love,  in  men  and  brutes,  379. 
moral  and  social  phenomena  of, 
382. 
Sexual  union,  operation  of,  234  et  seq. 
Sexual  unions,  purpose  of,  384,  385. 
Shakespeare,  created  imaginary  per- 
sons, 140,  141. 
Simiadae,  general  term  for  monkeys, 

99. 
Simonides,  poetical  theologies  of,  24 

et  seq. 
Sixteenth  century,  intellectual  habits 

in  the,  21. 
Sin,  how  to  be  viewed,  148,  note. 
Slavery,  under  the  Roman  law,  165. 
Sleep,  phenomena  of,  479  et  seq. 

better  thoughts  during,  489. 
Society,  phenomena  of,  334  et  seq. 
Solar  system,  how  viewed   by   the 
Greeks,  Zl  et  seq. 
origin  of,  168,  172,  301. 
Somnambulism,  phenomena  of,  491. 
Soul,  meaning  of,  478. 
Souls,  of  men,  genesis  of,  in  Plato's 
Kosmos,  51,  76,  77, 
transmigration  of,  78. 
triplicity  of,  51,  76,  77. 
Space,  illimitable,  concepts  of,  260 
et  seq. 


Species,  finality  of,  151  et  seq. 

meaning  of,  372  et  seq. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  his  theory  of  ani- 
mal evolution,  7,  8. 

answers  to  his  objections,  145  et  seq. 

attacks  "  the  current  creed,"  434. 

creation  is  something  made  out  of 
nothing,  136. 

creation  incapable  of  being  con- 
ceived, 136. 

creation    not    supported    by  any 
proof,  135. 

his  agnosticism  examined,  257  c^ 
seq. 

his  argument  from  parasites,  151 
et  seq. 

his  denial  of    the  possibility  of 
knowing  mind,  508. 

his  doctrine  of  evolution,  131. 

liis  ethical  system,  427  et  seq. 

his  ghost-theory,  284  et  seq. 

his  origin  of  man,  348-351,  357. 

his   psychological   system,  408  et 
seq. 

his  psychology  criticised,  470,  504. 

his  theory  of  mind,  510-516. 

his  theory  of  the  moral  sense,  418, 
423. 

his  treatment  of  the  divine  attri- 
butes, 293. 

his  "  unknown  cause,"  163,  166. 

how  his  theory  differs  from  Dar- 
win's, 225. 

on  the  evolution  of  mind,  64. 

on  the  evolution  of  animals,  179. 

on  universal  law  of  evolution,  167. 

special  creations  presumptively  ab- 
surd, IZ2  et  seq. 
St.  Paul,  his  doctrine  of  the  resurrec- 
tion, 468. 
Struggle  for  existence,  meaning  of,  88. 


664 


CREATION   OR  EVOLUTION? 


Substance,  distinct  from  power,  233. 
of  mind,  469. 

Substitution  and  suppression  of  or- 
gans, 236  ct  seq. 

*'  Supernatural,"  meaning  of,  214. 

"Survival  of  the  fittest,"  meaning 
of,  65,  66. 

Swim-bladder,   supposed  horaologue 
of  a  lung,  67. 
conversion  of,  96. 

Taine,  M.,  bis  views  of  the  objects  of 
history,  545. 

Telescope,  formation  of  the,  68-70. 

Thales,  philosophy  of,  24,  27,  28. 
period  of,  28,  7wie. 

Theology,  the  current,  not  to  be  con- 
sidered, 145. 


Time,  beginning  of,  in  Plato's  Kos- 
mos,  48. 
conception  of  endless,  262  et  seq. 

Transmigration,  from  animal  to  ani- 
mal, 54-59. 

Typical  plan,  concealed  in  the  ante- 
foetal  germ,  238. 

Uniformity.     See  Pattern. 

Varieties,  what  are,  372. 
Vertebral  column,  analysis  of,  215. 
Voltaire,  saying  of,  25. 
Von  Baer,  his  embryologic  law,  229. 
Vortices.     See  Descartes. 

Women,  ongin  of,  in  Plato's  Kosmos, 
55. 


BY  GEORGE  TICKNOR  CURTIS. 


LIF£   OF   DANIEL  WEBSTER.    By  George  Ticknor  Curtis. 

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